CRITICAL ART PEDAGOGY

CRITICAL EDUCATION PRACTICE

VOLUME I7
GARLAND REFERENCE LIBRARY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE
VOLUME 854
CRITICAL EDUCATION PRACTICE
SHIRLEY R. STEINBERG A N D J O E L. KINCHELOE, SERIES EDITORS

C U R R I C U L U M D E V E L O P M E N T IN RETHINKING LANGUAGE ARTS

THE POSTMODERN ERA Passion and Practice
by Patrick Slattery by N i n a Zaragoza

BECOMING A STUDENT O F TEACHING EDUCATIONAL REFORM

Methodologies for Exploring A Deweyan Perspective
Self and School Context by Douglas J . Simpson
by Robert V. Bullough, Jr. and M i c h a e l J . B. Jackson
and A n d r e w D . Gitlin
LIBERATION T H E O L O G Y
OCCUPIED READING AND CRITICAL PEDAGOGY
Critical Foundations for IN T O D A Y ' S C A T H O L I C SCHOOLS
an Ecological Theory Social Justice in Action
by A l a n A . Block by Thomas Oldenski

DEMOCRACY, MULTICULTURALISM, CURRICULUM

AND THE COMMUNITY COLLEGE Toward New Identities
A Critical Perspective edited by W i l l i a m F. Pinar
by Robert A . Rhoads
WRITING EDUCATIONAL BIOGRAPHY
and James R. Valadez
Explorations in
ANATOMY OF A COLLABORATION Qualitative Research
Study of a College of Education/ edited by C r a i g Kridel
Public School Partnership
TEACHING FROM UNDERSTANDING
by Judith J . Slater
Teacher As Interpretive Inquirer
TEACHING MATHEMATICS edited by Julia L . Ellis
Toward a Sound Alternative
CRITICAL A R T PEDAGOGY
by Brent Davis
Foundations for
INNER-CITY SCHOOLS, Postmodern Art Education
MULTICULTURALISM, by Richard C a r y
AND TEACHER EDUCATION
A Professional Journey
by Frederick L . Yeo
CRITICAL ART PEDAGOGY
FOUNDATIONS FOR
POSTMODERN ART EDUCATION

RICHARD CARY
First published by Garland Publishing, Inc.

This edition published 2011 by Routledge:

Routledge Routledge
Taylor & Francis Group Taylor & Francis Group
711 Third Avenue 2 Park Square, Milton Park
New York, N Y 10017 Abingdon, Oxon 0X14 4RN

Copyright © 1998 by Richard Cary

All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cary, Richard, 1947-

Critical art pedagogy : foundations for postmodern art education /
by Richard Cary.
p. cm. — (Critical education practice ; v. 17. Garland reference
library of social science ; v. 854)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8153-0915-5 (alk. paper)
1. Art—Study and teaching. 2. Art—Philosophy. I. Title.
II. Series: Garland reference library of social science. Critical education
practice ; vol. 17. III. Series: Garland reference library of social
science ; v. 854.
N84.C37 1998
707M—dc21 98-29797
CIP
To Barbara Cary
Table of Contents
Chapter One 3
Critical Theory:
A Philosophy for Praxis in Art Education

Chapter Two 63
A Critical History of Art Education:
Dangerous Memories and Critical Consciousness

Chapter Three 105

Describing the Individual Art Student:
Psychologies for Critical Art Pedagogy

Chapter Four 181

Creating Dangerous Knowledge:
Semiotics, Deconstruction, and Qualitative Methodology

Chapter Five 267

Aesthetics for Critical Praxis

Chapter Six 315

Models for Practice: Prescriptive Grand Narratives or
Potential Resources for Critical Art Pedagogy?

Chapter Seven 325

Disconnecting from Modernism,
Connecting to Postmodernism

Resources 345

Index 357
CRITICAL ART PEDAGOGY
Chapter One

Critical Theory:
A Philosophy for Praxis in Art Education

A Place for Philosophy in Art Pedagogy

Art teachers often detect the gloomy specter of surreal com-
plexity rising up over the prospect of commingling art educa-
tion and philosophy. They consider philosophy a dark and dry
miasma best left to whirl off in its own nebulous obscurities.
They prefer that it leave them untouched and unperturbed
enough to proceed with the daily routines and rituals of school
art instruction. They ascribe to the sentiment attributed to
abstract expressionist artist and critic Barnett Newman,
"Aesthetics is to artists as ornithology is to birds," and they
gratefully apply it to the philosophy of art education (Hughes,
1971).
But Newman's statement is, of course, a self-fulfilling
prophecy. For us art teachers, and especially for our anti-
theoretic colleagues, the traditional theory-practice tension
appears at first to dismiss the fussy irrelevance of philosophy
and thereby invite a full engagement with practical realities.
This appearance of engagement in practical reality is, how-
ever, a counterfeit pose separating us from layers of meaning
and value in practical reality. Further, teachers who insist on
this separation of theory and practice tend to occupy sub-
ordinate positions in the conclave of hierarchies that define
education.
For philosophers, meanwhile, any union of philosophy
and art becomes complicated by the overlay of education, a
perspective often noted for its oddly intricate, maddeningly
desultory generalities. The hybrid philosophy of art education
can be a bewildering intellectual apparatus, and any of us who
teach art let it hum and buzz quietly in the background, con-
tent that it remain just beyond our selective attention while
we serve our time on task. We may cast furtive glances in its
4 Critical Art Pedagogy

direction occasionally, hoping for reassurance that what we do

as teachers is anchored in some solid intellectual foundation
that has been carefully and persuasively laid out by a more
knowledgeable ancient race.
The chasm between the philosophy of art education and
the practice of teaching art is hardly news. While philoso-
phers philosophize, art teachers teach, each working independ-
ently concentrating on matters at hand. The teacher twirls an
index finger in loopy circles around one ear in thinly veiled
contempt of the theoretician's casuistry. The philosopher-
theorist sighs with regret over the waste of pristine concepts
misapplied in the mundane classroom. Students in education
classes endure perennial reenactments of this scenario so they
can reconstruct it accurately when they become teachers.
We can bring some novelty, i f not clarity, to this dysfunc-
tional dichotomy by contesting its status as natural. We can
suggest that teaching art and philosophizing about teaching art
have been unfairly separated, perhaps reflecting by analogy
the hiatus between theory and practice in science—as in lab
work versus field work. Or, perhaps the philosophy-teaching
distinction reflects the management-labor hierarchies in busi-
ness and industrial organizations. In any event, the schism
between teaching art and the philosophy of teaching art
probably reflects and protects the typical power structure in
schools. Principals, supervisors, curriculum specialists, text-
book writers, and other anointed experts are superior; teachers
and students are subordinate. A system that devalues the in-
sights and reflections of teachers engaged in living practice
consecrates those outside the classroom as Givers of Truth.
Those who claim generalized, independent knowledge reify it
as rules that govern practice. They also tend to occupy, under
the cachet that knowledge provides, prestigious positions in
the school bureaucracy over teachers and students who happen
to create the particulars of the pedestrian, living knowledge of
the classroom.
Education values one form of knowledge over others in
education, and the difference creates and supports a hierarchy.
Those at the top of the hierarchy want to maintain and, when
necessary, flaunt the philosophy on which their power
depends. It is easier to maintain this philosophy i f it remains
Critical Theory 5

closed to question by those in the subordinate positions. One

can achieve such a powerful silence in a variety of ways. The
hierarchy proceeding from the theory-practice dichotomy
appears to be the natural order of things, the common sense
position impervious to argument. Or, its tenets can be ad-
vertised as so obvious as to lie beyond question: philosophers
philosophize; teachers teach. Also, official access to any
forum where a philosophy may be contested and changed may
be declared off limits to subordinates. Finally, one can hide
philosophy by couching it in obfuscating terminology. Profes-
sional lingoes confected by arrant jargonauts often serve to
camouflage unseen assumptions and other intellectual tools of
the trade.
Note in this description of the relationship between
teaching art and philosophizing about teaching art, one of the
major themes of this book: the underpinnings of the apparent
dichotomy between theory and practice are unstable and open
to analysis. One should resist accepting the dichotomy as the
absolute truth or a fait accompli. Beliefs are postulates, choic-
es, or personal interpretations susceptible to either adoption
or rejection. They are subject to inquiry and change, as war-
ranted. Belief and truth differ, even though school bureaucrats
may muddle this distinction by presenting belief as truth,
especially i f it reinforces their power. They also expect sub-
ordinates to acquiesce.
We often find belief, truth and power closely associated,
with one mistaken for another. The representation of belief
as truth in the service of power occurs so often in human
experience that we might use the term "truth claims" as more
appropriate. It signals the vulnerability in glib testimony to
presumed facts. A n objective fact can prove to be, in
actuality, a subjective insistence designed to achieve a certain
end. Skepticism and inquiry about the basis of truth claims and
purportedly obvious facts are fundamental rights and, indeed,
professional obligations of teachers. After all, teachers and
their students make knowledge, and they occasionally find
representations of truth to be false as they live daily life in
the academy and in all contexts around it.
Belief may have the aura of truth when it has been
invested with power, but beliefs may be only strong proposals,
6 Critical Art Pedagogy

heuristic suppositions individuals adopt as means to ends. B y

analogy, people involved in art usually understand questions of
appearance versus illusion, and the ephemeral nature of aes-
thetic value. Like the relationship among power-belief-truth,
the relationship between appearance, illusion, and aesthetic
value is organic. A change in one part usually produces
changes in the other two.
This book espouses the belief that teachers of art can
teach art and philosophize about teaching art. In fact, not
only can they philosophize about their practice, but they
should do so as a professional obligation as well. Thinking
about the reasons for certain practices, opening practices to
new possibilities, revealing and redefining the rationales for art
teaching practices, and questioning power-belief-truth relation-
ships—all of these exercises can engage teachers of art. The
right to reflect or philosophize on the nature of practice
should not be an exclusive prerogative of power. But for too
many art teachers, philosophizing about practice subverts the
status quo. Simply to consider philosophizing is to question
the roles and strictures the hierarchy imposes. Contesting ver-
sions of truth, belief, and power relations becomes a political
act when those versions determine the allocation of resources,
value, status, and legitimacy. By reflecting on their practices,
art teachers challenge the privileged positions of anonymous,
omniscient narrators authorized to dictate art teaching prac-
tices and to assign teachers the limited role of delivering
instruction, but not the privileges of designing it, changing it,
or reflecting on how it ought to be.
As suggested earlier, philosophy, like other disciplines, has
developed a difficult, obscure jargon with which to transact its
affairs. So has art. The language barrier has been instrumental
in the apotheosis of philosophy as a discrete intellectual
discipline instead of an essential intellectual activity applic-
able to all fields. The dynamics of power, belief, and truth
operate in intellectual hierarchies just as they do in school
bureaucracies. One way to gain access is to examine the
traditional, romanticized idea of philosophy as an Olympian
realm where some genius philosopher-gods conspire to inter-
cede mysteriously in human affairs. Perhaps "theorizing"
should become the word we use for reflecting on personal
Critical Theory 7

experience and practice as a way of acquiring and testing our

beliefs, everyday decisions, and practices. But as a term for
integrating the activity of teaching art with reflection about
practices and possibilities of teaching art, "philosophy" seems
especially appropriate given its etymology. "Love of knowl-
edge" seems apt so long as we understand knowledge ultimate-
ly to be integrated with practice.
The idea of reflecting on practice as a professional respon-
sibility of art teachers is hardly novel, but new perspectives on
art and art education emerging from postmodern theories of
culture give the idea a new energy. Postmodern thought advo-
cates the provisional, constructed natures of belief, knowl-
edge, and value. It recommends a suspicion of the arrogance
inherent in regarding truth claims as objective and timeless.
Postmodern thought also questions the implications for and
tacit associations of such truth claims with various potentially
oppressive power structures that influence human experience.
Note, meanwhile, that the current connotation of the
term "philosophy" comes close to the concept of ideology.
Historically, "ideology" has carried a pejorative connotation
in intellectual circles, perhaps because "ideology" usually
means a set of settled beliefs about cultural, social, or political
applications—that is to say, the realms of the particular that
lie beyond the realm of theory. For Marx, "ideology" meant a
false consciousness about socio-political affairs (Colapietro,
1993). But nowadays, we use the word in a more general sense.
Ideology addresses the present in an involved way whereas
philosophy signals a more remote—and safer—enterprise for
power interests. Ironically, the very term "ideology" itself is
subject to the political dynamics of truth-power-belief rela-
tions.
If we want the work of forming, testing, and reforming
the ideological foundations of art education to become a
worthwhile component of practice, we must recognize that
inventing a philosophy from the ground up may be an imprac-
tical alternative for teachers, supervisors, principals, and
students. Thus, a useful approach to this project is to adopt
contemporary ideologies that reflect concerns about power,
belief and truth, while balancing our practical needs with
desires to visualize possibilities and then to chart courses
8 Critical Art Pedagogy

toward them. One contemporary philosophy, critical theory,

is particularly well-suited for this project.
In the 1992 Handbook of Research on Curriculum, Elliot
Eisner reviewed six prominent philosophies that shape the cur-
riculum, one of which is critical theory. While the education
community has yet to reach a consensus on its assessment of
critical theory, many classroom teachers, professors in col-
leges of education, researchers, students, and other partici-
pants in the educational dialogue agree that critical theory can
make important contributions to our understanding and educa-
tional practices. As a relatively new school of philosophy,
critical theory provides one of the foundations for situating
art's place in the schools of the postmodern era. It encourages
a revitalized conversation about freedom, knowledge, power,
and contemporary culture between participants in the institu-
tions of the art world and art education.
But be warned: this book avoids presenting critical theory
as a tightly prescriptive, exclusive philosophy on which to
base a completely new form of art education. Instead, critical
theory is a particularly useful new resource for enriching under-
standing and creating new possibilities. As applied to educa-
tion, critical theory neither suggests nor promotes a specific,
unified, instructional methodology or particular curricular
content. Instead, a critical pedagogy is a flexible set of proposi-
tions aimed at education's function as a means to liberation
and justice to be adopted by art learners and art makers in
particular places at particular times. A critical arts pedagogy
explores ways through which schools can engage the art world
to promote these goals.
Meanwhile, all forms of pedagogy based on critical theory
are unabashedly idealistic. Critical pedagogy is radical in its
advocacy of the democratization of society through education
and schooling. Critical pedagogy is, however, ultimately con-
cerned with transforming practices to reach these idealistic
ends in particular settings and times rather than building and
defending a monolithic body of theory inscribed in erudite
treatises then stored on polished bookshelves. It is a philo-
sophy or ideology for teaching more than about teaching. It
suggests a philosophical potential students and teachers can
actualize in lived experience. Critical pedagogy is more or less
Critical Theory 9

compatible with a wide variety of instructional models, cur-

ricula and teachers, and is applicable in a wide variety of
classrooms.
But the term "critical theory" needs clarification when
used in relation to art and the art world. Several years ago, Na-
tional Geographic ran an article on the frog-eating bat. The
next issue included a letter to the editor from an observant
reader pointing out that a few years earlier, National Geo-
graphic had published an article on the bat-eating frog. A
similar twist can accompany discussions of critical theory in
the context of art and art education. Critical theory does not
refer directly to art criticism or to tasks associated with
identifying aesthetic value or meaning in art. Instead, it
promotes the search for justice and engages in the promulga-
tion of social criticism with the objective of uncovering
implicit sources of oppression in people's lives.
As a philosophy, critical theory engages in social critique
as its primary dialogue. This critique develops increased under-
standing that, in turn, leads to action aimed at a greater realiza-
tion of the ideals of justice. This very broad description re-
flects the fact that the scope of critical theory itself is broad.
It is more a general theoretical perspective than a tightly
constructed, specific methodology aimed at deriving progres-
sively more precise descriptions of some objective truth. A l -
though we can certainly call critical theory a philosophy, it
exalts neither logic nor empirical observation as a means to
test propositions or generate truth. Rather, it provides an
apparatus for understanding social institutions like education
and the ideas that surround them, like freedom and justice. In
fact, it provides a whole set of tools for carrying out a critical
analysis of the meanings and values of past and present human
conditions and for exploring possibilities for emancipatory
action.
Actually, however, the term "apparatus" might be an inap-
propriate descriptor for critical theory. We need a more hu-
manistic term, so a better metaphor to describe its two major
components might be "heart" and "mind." The heart of
critical theory is its concern for social justice through the em-
powerment and emancipation of the oppressed. The mind of
critical theory has several central beliefs guiding its concerns.
10 Critical Art Pedagogy

It accentuates openness to new and diverse forms of knowl-

edge. It promotes awareness of hidden means of oppression. It
rejects the culture of positivism and accepts the idea that facts
and values are indivisible. It holds that knowledge is socially
constructed and that knowledge and power are related.

The Heart of Critical Theory

To describe the idealism that informs the motives and objec-
tives of critical theory, Peter McLaren (1989) appropriated
the Hebrew symbol, tikkun, which means "to heal, repair, and
transform the world." Most critical theorists see our society's
realities as starkly contrasted to our professed democratic
ideals. Instead of functioning as an actualized democracy, our
society is a complex hierarchy of groups formed by the un-
even distribution of power. The interests of those with greater
power compete with the interests of those with less, which
results in the marginalization and oppression of the powerless.
The heart of critical theory despises and hopes to change this
asymmetrical social class structure. Further, critical theory
addresses the problems of unequal social classes in an impas-
sioned, often confrontational manner. Tension inevitably
arises when one addresses the issue of power.
In her essay "Teaching the Rich," critical art historian
Carol Duncan (1993) challenged the elitist versions of art
history and aesthetic value that the art curricula of prestigious
liberal arts colleges—the so-called "good schools"—typically
present. She noted that the practices of the good schools
become models for other schools in a progression that finally
presents art as insulated from social forces. The subsequent
restriction placed on access to art education limits aesthetic
consciousness and artistic knowledge as an intellectual
privilege reserved for the elite. With biting sarcasm, Duncan
critiqued elitist art pedagogies as sanctuaries from the vul-
garities of a philistine society in which art represented sacred
respite for the privileged. A primary function of elitist art
pedagogies is to preserve this privilege by rigidly defining and
vigorously defending the sanctuary walls.
Deborah P. Britzman discussed critical confrontation in
her essay, "Decentering Discourse in Teachers Education: Or,
the Unleashing of Unpopular Things," (in Weiler and
Critical Theory 11

Mitchell, 1992). She reflected on the "scariness" critical peda-

gogy evokes as it identifies the distorting effects of authori-
tative discourse, contests power, crosses boundaries, and brings
students to greater understanding by inviting them to actually
experience these "unpopular things" firsthand. Critical peda-
gogy posits the classroom as a site where students and teachers
can examine and question. Decentering the status quo can
sometimes produce an uncomfortable classroom, a somewhat
less than cozy place for politely discussing safe ideas within
the schooling and art boundaries power interests draw.
It may appear that at its heart, critical theory lives on
anger and fatalism. Anger, yes; fatalism, no. In critical
theory-based considerations of social problems and their rela-
tionships to art and education, burns an unmistakable, en-
trenched anger. But this anger becomes hope when tempered
by critical consciousness and understanding. Henry Giroux
(1992) cautioned against focusing too narrowly on the repro-
duction element of critical theory. A new awareness of how
schools and other institutions reproduce unjust social struc-
tures tells us what to oppose, but not what to embrace. Giroux
believes that in pursuing a preoccupation with how the schools
reproduce oppressive social structures, we risk a "discourse of
despair." He proposed a concept of teaching based on critical
theory that includes the creation of a more hopeful dialogue
focused on developing new possibilities.
Suzi Gablik's (1991) call for remythologizing art presented
an excellent example of a language of hope and possibility for
critical art pedagogy. In her book, The Re-enchantment of Art,
she encouraged the development of a more socially and
ecologically interactive context for art by reopening art to
the realm of spirituality through engagement in rituals and
myths that promote relatedness among people. Her new
agenda for art would stress community over self interest,
ecstasy over disinterested aesthetic contemplation, and con-
textualized value over autonomy of the art object. She under-
scored the important roles for compassion and concern as
"tools of the soul" that in concert with the spirituality of
myth and ritual will construct an art world characterized by an
aesthetics of radical relatedness.
12 Critical Art Pedagogy

In addition to its dialogue of hope and possibility, critical

pedagogy discourages fatalism by advocating focused action.
As an alternative to fatalistic acquiescence to schooling's re-
production of repressive structures, critical theory encourages
informed resistance. The idea of resistance as a counter to
reproduction is a relatively recent proposition. In 1977, Paul
Willis published a study called "Learning to Labour: How
Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs," that revealed
how youths from the British working class actively contested
both their school's formal curriculum and its hidden curricu-
lum. The students resisted their schooling as inferior to the
factory labor their fathers performed. The trouble was that
for these young men, resistance paid a poor return: they
resisted schooling by dropping out to join the labor force in
what amounted to dead-end jobs.
McLaren's (1989) analysis conceptualizes the concept of
resistance as a natural component of school culture. He argued
that in the schooling arena, resistance is a naturally occurring
effort students make to incorporate their street corner culture
into the classroom. This resistance reveals an effort to partici-
pate in schooling and make it acknowledge their daily lives.
Students rebel against a delibidinized school culture character-
ized by admonishments to strive for goals and adopt perspec-
tives access to which subordinated groups have scant hope.
The students' street identities are all the cultural capital they
really have worth risking. Resistance to bourgeois forms of
schooling helps them preserve a sense of self and prevent the
eradication of their culture by a schooling that commodifies
them as products for the labor market.
The implication for a theory of critical art education is
that art pedagogy should include a challenge to the traditional
instructional practices that replace the students' art worlds
with the official school art world built on canonical adult
standards. For the most part, students construct their art
worlds outside school in the affairs of everyday life. They
compose their art worlds of acculturated aesthetic values, art
objects, art making techniques, and codes for identifying and
valuing art.
Critical theory espouses identifying and creating an
awareness of the roots of inequality and marginalization,
Critical Theory 13

forming and enunciating critiques of the resultant social prob-

lems, and actively engaging in resistance. The heart of critical
theory thus embraces "agency," a critical awareness that leads
to informed action designed to counter processes of domina-
tion deeply embedded in our daily lives. Critical theory is an
ideology directed toward identifying and solving problems, not
toward an impassive reflection on the nature and meaning of
problems that amounts to silent complicity and accommoda-
tion. McLaren pointed out that morality, not logic, character-
izes critical theory and social critique.
The problem of domination and the responses resistance
and agency offer amount to important conceptual tools a criti-
cal art pedagogy can use to connect with the contemporary
world and take advantage of the possibilities this expanded
commerce opens.

The Mind of Critical Theory

The heart and mind are, of course, interconnected, and the
mind of critical theory is its intellectual capital: the concepts
and the relations among them that constitute the raw materi-
als from which it fashions its ideas, propositions, and critiques.
A primary aspect of the mind of critical theory is its
epistemology—that is, beliefs about knowledge and how knowl-
edge is formed. Among these beliefs are the propositions that
knowledge is multi-form, value laden, and socially constructed
in the cultural arena.
Critical theorists acknowledge that many differing forms
of knowledge can claim legitimacy, but they are not mutually
exclusive. Moreover, forms of knowledge may continue to
multiply; they are not a closed set. Nor are they necessarily
related in a tightly constituted, logical hierarchical structure.
McLaren (1989) differentiated technical knowledge, practical
knowledge, and emancipatory knowledge. Technical knowl-
edge is quantitatively measured and is usually associated with
the scientific method. Practical knowledge concerns how indi-
viduals assimilate then make use of their present experience.
We usually associate practical experience with description,
rational analysis, or what we generally refer to as qualitative
methodology. "Emancipatory knowledge," a term originally
used by critical philosopher Jurgen Habermas (see Young,
14 Critical Art Pedagogy

1990), is characterized more by its aims than by its method of

acquisition. Gaining emancipatory knowledge involves the
tasks of identifying hidden sources of oppression in individual
lives and distortion of social relations among people. It in-
cludes the awareness and motivations that propel resistance.
Joe Kincheloe (1991) notes other distinguishing features
of critical epistemology in his book, Teachers as Researchers:
Qualitative Inquiry as a Path to Empowerment. One feature is
the interaction of gender with ways of knowing. He called the
Cartesian-based, absolute, immutable, objective, rational,
certain, scientific knowledge "machismo knowledge." He con-
trasted it to feminist ways of knowing associated with the
organic, less predictable, more intuitive, more life-oriented
dimensions. Then he underscored the similarity between
feminist knowledge and Michael Polanyi's "personal knowl-
edge," or knowledge formed through passionate involvement
of the knower with the known.
Critical theory recognizes that, in practice, people award
different forms of knowledge different status. Some forms of
knowledge demand exclusive domain; they assume themselves
to be single pathways to absolute truth. Other forms get sub-
jugated because they implicitly or explicitly threaten power
and privilege. Although this subjugation process can be subtle
and often operates sub rosa, it is nevertheless highly effective.
Forms of knowledge that privilege certain groups remain
deeply entrenched. The form of knowledge we know as "the
scientific method" is the most prominent example. Those
who discount it lack common sense, suffer from irrationality,
stupidity, and even craziness.
Few critical theorists suggest that the scientific method is
necessarily wrong. Instead, they point out that this form of
knowledge bears a political relationship to power. Knowledge
creates power and, in turn, is supported by power. Given a
form of knowledge thought to be an ultimate source of truth,
those who enjoy direct access to it can regulate that access so
as to exclude others and maintain their own power and privi-
lege. Then through their association with power, exclusive
forms of knowledge naturally become privileged. Power labels
its favored forms of knowledge obvious. Power refers to it as
common sense, far beyond and protected from critical
Critical Theory 15

questioning. Those in power create the terms of power-knowl-

edge relations. They are the "experts," the "authorities;"
therefore, they call the shots.
Critical theory recognizes that one effective mechanism
of oppression is the domination of one form of knowledge
over others. Some writers on this subject refer to knowledge as
"historically conditioned." This means that everything that
our culture regards as knowledge develops by an accretive
process with political dimensions. N o form of knowledge can
escape being shaped by historical and economic processes and
political influences. This shaping process affects even scientif-
ic knowledge, despite its claims to objectivity, value-free con-
cepts, and unbiased methodologies. Critical theory questions
the claims of exclusivity of privileged forms of knowledge and
promotes an awareness of the need to question these claims.
Further, it points to the possibilities for positive change that
result from becoming critically aware of the pernicious effects
of power-knowledge relations.
One of critical theory's most promising contributions to
educational theory and practice is its insistence that we have
much to learn from subjugated forms of knowledge. Church
savants once possessed certain knowledge of astronomy.
Their commonly held belief—that is, their ideology—about
the source of all truth was that it came from God. It was in
their interest to preserve this belief by elevating it to the
status of doctrine. Sensing the threat inherent in a new form
of knowledge represented by the scientific discoveries of
Galileo, emissaries of the Church ferreted him out for interro-
gation. In his defense, Galileo invited his antagonists to
observe his discoveries through his telescope. Observing physi-
cal phenomena represented a daring new method of knowledge
formation at the time. The inquisitors said they had no need
to look through a telescope to observe astronomical phenom-
ena because, since the Bible and other sanctioned religious
authorities mentioned no such phenomena, they could not
exist. Their ideological commitment to religious authority as
the sole source of knowledge provided them with their version
of truth. The churchmen were so secure in their epistemo-
logical ideology that they declared Galileo a heretic (Ary,
Jacobs and Razavieh, 1996).
16 Critical Art Pedagogy

Today, critical theory regards claims to scientific objec-

tivity, in its turn, as overstated and misleading. Since claims to
factual knowledge have implicit ideological foundations that
can produce detrimental consequences for various people and
different groups in the social hierarchy, it becomes an essen-
tial critical task to uncover and transform embedded sources
of oppression and injustice. It follows that so-called facts or
claims to truth need not have single, unequivocal meanings
that are the same for all people.
Over their long histories, both education and art have suf-
fered the effects of the political relationship between power
and knowledge. The Cold War political climate of the 1950s
and early 1960s strongly influenced, even defined, the major
educational reforms of the time. As Spring (1976) noted,
science, math, and other subjects crucial to military and in-
dustrial technology dominated the curriculum to ensure a
ready supply of technologically prepared workers and soldiers.
Those in power considered the need for and the practicality of
this curriculum obvious for both society and students. Compet-
ing ideas about curriculum went resolutely unconsidered. Any
critic of the curricular domination of science and technology
risked charges of subversion.
Meanwhile, the art world associates power with aesthetic
value. Like the process of identifying what counts as legiti-
mate knowledge, political and cultural forces shade and shape
aesthetic value. Traditionally conceived histories of art view
art history as a progression of differing, competing styles.
Royal academies of art undertook to enforce stylistic ortho-
doxy by controlling the right of an artist to exhibit and by
controlling students' access to art instruction. Art with
aesthetic value was the art academy officials recognized. It was
hardly accidental that this art earned recognition as artis-
tically valuable—that is to say, "good"—by conforming to
royal or state interests. Equestrian statues depicting rulers and
military leaders as mighty conquerors are familiar examples.
The art of the French painter Poussin is another. The purpose
of art, according to Poussin, was essentially to glorify military
heroes and monarchs (Janson, 1995).
Perhaps the most obvious and interesting example of
imposed artistic value centers on the symbiotic relationship
Critical Theory 17

between the artists of the Renaissance and the Catholic

Church. Churches commissioned, of course, many artworks
based on scenes from the Bible or other Christian teachings
for display in cathedrals. One function this art performed was
to inspire belief by making events central to religious teaching
more immediate by making them more concrete, more visual,
and therefore more memorable. Art that depicted miracles
served this purpose well.
The predominant stylistic characteristic of this art is
optical realism, and those artists who wanted to become suc-
cessful set out to capture the appearance of three-dimensional
scenes on two-dimensional surfaces. Various artistic conven-
tions like linear perspective and chiaroscuro helped them
create this illusion. The point is that the extent to which an
artwork conformed to the stylistic requirements of optical
realism determined its aesthetic value during this period. This
style, in turn, promoted the interests of the Church. One
could hardly argue that aesthetic value existed in a vacuum in-
dependent of the art object. Like other types of value, it was
an integral part of the Renaissance culture. Aesthetic value
came from cultural and political preferences, and the art ob-
ject earned it according to the extent to which its physical and
formal properties conformed to those stylistic conventions
that served the interests of the power elite.
The theme of the power-knowledge relationship weaves
throughout this book, appearing and re-appearing in reflec-
tions about both education and art and stimulating insights
that suggest modes of critical practice in art education.

Critical Theory's Critique of Neo-positivism.

Qualitative Versus Quantitative Knowledge
Critical theory also recognizes the familiar distinction between
qualitative and quantitative knowledge formation. Qualitative
data cannot be expressed in numbers; quantitative data can be.
Whereas quantitative data are simply magnitudes, qualitative
data describe non-numerical characteristics that individuals
personally experience or perceive. For example, quantitative
data can tell a researcher how many people viewed a particular
painting in a museum. It can even tell how long they looked
at it. But only qualitative data can describe their aesthetic or
18 Critical Art Pedagogy

intellectual responses to the painting. Critical theorists

typically find the latter information more interesting and
useful than the former.
While critical theorists may accept the quantitative
paradigm, they distrust knowledge generated by what they re-
gard as unexamined overconfidence in and the widespread
misuse of quantitative assumptions and science-based methods
for generating knowledge about human social phenomena. In
fact, this misuse is central to any discussion of a critical
theory's epistemology. Critical theorists refer to the exag-
gerated emphasis on the quantitative paradigm as "posi-
tivism," and their critique of positivism, one of the primary
characteristics of the mind of critical theory, can be spirited.
Joe Kincheloe's (1991) version of this critique in Teachers as
Researchers is particularly thorough, and this discussion of the
critique of positivism relies heavily on Kincheloe's account.
Positivism began with the nineteenth century French
philosopher August Comte, who believed that the scientific
method provided the only reliable path to certainty and truth.
Then, the philosophers of the Vienna Circle ratified and
advanced Comte's conclusions. Their epistemological pro-
gram included the repudiation of metaphysics as a legitimate
form of knowledge. Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy
that seeks to discover truth through speculation about matters
beyond the realm of the observable world. The nature of the
soul, for example, is a metaphysical issue. The positivists
based their repudiation of metaphysics on the non-verifiability
of metaphysical assertions or questions. They considered
verifiability possible only empirically—that is, by means of
sensory observations of real world phenomena. Metaphysical
questions, which include many subjective issues of interest to
both critical theorists and contemporary art educators, were
considered nonsensical since they could not be verified by
objective, empirical observation. Notice here that observation
is sine qua non of the scientific method.
Kincheloe's critique of positivism underscores three
themes of "neo-positivism," a term that describes the work of
contemporary descendants of Comte and the Vienna Circle.
The first theme of neo-positivism is scientism, the continued
elevation of science as the only truthful way of knowing. The
Critical Theory 19

second theme is the doctrine of scientific politics, which

stipulates that since science is the sole source of truth, it is
rightfully applicable to social, political, and moral affairs. The
third theme is value freedom: Facts issuing from scientific
inquiry are independent of values. In fact, values are the
source of bias in the neo-positivist epistemology.
Critical theorists repudiate positivism's faith in value-free
inquiry. Most of them ascribe to a version of the argument
that facts cannot be value-free because they themselves are
the products of value formation. This means that in the
process of certifying observations to be facts, the criteria one
uses are themselves laden with one's values, assumptions, so-
cial customs, cultural norms, personal choices, and theoretical
perspectives. Although the scientific observer may or may not
be aware of the influence of such values, they operate none-
theless. The logic is related to what Lincoln and Guba (1985)
call the "theory-ladenness of facts." They argued that it is
impossible to have facts that are not themselves the products
of theories, which in turn rest at some point on assumptions.
Since an assumption is merely a willingness to believe an asser-
tion without conclusive proof, one cannot take scientific
inquiry's claims to total objectivity and value-free methods
seriously. Nevertheless, contemporary adherents of positivism
continue to foster the illusion that facts are objective. Thus,
in the final analysis, positivism relies on the myth of objec-
tivity.
The critique of positivism also includes the rejection of
naive realism, the belief that knowledge is "out there" or
objectively present and independent from human perception,
experience, and consciousness. Critical theorists deplore the
consequences of this doctrine, which include a separation of
the knower from the known. Knowledge becomes a fetishistic
object. The instructional consequence of this separation is the
conception of knowledge as a set of facts to be transmitted to
students by various big-jug-into-little-mugs instructional stra-
tegies. The teacher simply pours into each identical, passive
receptacle a certain amount of the elixir of knowledge from
his or her larger ration. Kincheloe regarded the separation of
the knower from the known to be so repugnant a feature of
neo-positivist epistemology that he devotes a chapter to
20 Critical Art Pedagogy

developing an understanding of ways that a critical pedagogy

can combat this separation.
The positivist forms of knowledge education adopts, such
as behaviorism, use the device of operationalism, which
further obscures alternative forms of knowing. Operationalism
is the practice of reducing abstract phenomena to their objec-
tively observable measurements. For example, the vastly com-
plex entity known as intelligence is equated with numerical
scores on an IQ test, except at the most sophisticated levels
of critical understanding. Other dimensions of intelligence are
considered meaningless. But Howard Gardner's (1983) concept
of multiple intelligences counters this assumption and lends
credence to art educators wishing to construct a critical art
pedagogy. This topic receives a more thorough treatment
later.
Another important point in the critique of positivism is
the repudiation of reductionism, which asserts that all phenom-
ena can be reduced to a single set of knowable laws. This
assumption leads directly to the misapplication of positivist
methods developed for the physical sciences to the so-called
social and behavioral sciences. Most critical thinkers consider
human matters too complex to yield to reductionistic assump-
tions. In Acts of Meaning, Jerome Bruner (1990) deplored the
devolution of psychology into a discipline characterized by
the production of ever tighter, neater, and smaller studies that
are typically so overly reductionistic that their most note-
worthy characteristic is their cautiously accreted meaningless-
ness. Looking for a first-and-only cause can lead to misleading
conceptions, and it could one day lead to intellectual irrele-
vance for the entire discipline of psychology and its related
dependant, education.
Lincoln and Guba (1985) confidently pronounced positiv-
ism passe. But beyond the rarefied domain of theoretical
epistemology, this summation of the effects of the critique of
positivism would seem premature. The most cursory survey of
current educational research and evaluation reveals an over-
whelming preponderance of neo-positivist studies clogging the
research literature. While many legitimate uses for quantita-
tive information exist, the livelier, more relevant, more useful
qualitative data or critical ways of knowing rarely appear in
Critical Theory 21

the educational orthodoxy. Neo-positivism retains enormous

power in the educational decision-making process. Educators
use only those variables they can express numerically to evalu-
ate our schools. Many traditional observers of education agree
with critical theorists that the over-reliance on quantitative
data renders these evaluations incomplete and inadequate.
Those expecting change still lack assurances, but clearly the
voice of critical theory has joined the educational dialogue.

Critical Consciousness
The mind of critical theory develops critiques of social condi-
tions based on analyses that responded to what John Dewey
(1933) called, "a felt difficulty." Perception of problematic
social conditions or discernment of injustices do not emerge
spontaneously in the natural order of things. A critical con-
sciousness develops out of and then applies an awareness of
the malign effects of coercive illusions, structures often so
deeply embedded in social experience as to be invisible there.
A critical consciousness is attuned to such deeply embedded
forms of injustice as those that emanate from racial, gender or
class distinctions. Thus, critical pedagogy aims to create then
expand critical consciousness as a form of knowledge. Critical
pedagogy provides one intervention that fosters critical con-
sciousness. Critical art pedagogy conceives of ways to engage
art so as to promote critical consciousness. Embracing the
postmodern concept of art's value and meaning as socially
contextualized and relational instead of autonomous is one of
critical art pedagogy's primary strategies.

Deconstruction
Deconstruction, a major intellectual asset of the mind of
critical theory, is one means by which critical analysis illumi-
nates tacit coercive conditions. French philosopher Jacques
Derrida (1982), who has developed the most comprehensive
statements about deconstruction, advocates its use as a
method of intellectual analysis for creating critical awareness
and engaging in critical resistance. Deconstruction unveils
those hidden influences that have shaped knowledge by identi-
fying, questioning and subverting false dichotomies called
"binary oppositions." Deconstruction acknowledges no such
22 Critical Art Pedagogy

thing as a pure, totally objective fact. A l l knowledge is con-

structed within a complex social context, and ideological
premises and values within the social context shape it. A more
extensive exploration of deconstruction and its implications
for critical art pedagogy appears later.
The critical consciousness recognizes the vital need to
engage in the processes of deconstruction that reveal layers of
plural meanings, tacit influences, and hidden consequences.
Illuminating deeper layers is one way to conceive of the decon-
struction project. Deconstruction is a rational process. It is, in
a sense, reasoned skepticism in the service of emancipation. It
identifies implicit ideologies with the ability to coerce.
Critical theory concludes that since knowledge is socially
constructed, it is value-laden. It rejects a pure dichotomy be-
tween the subjective and the objective, substituting in its place
a continuum locating each somewhere between two extremes.
A l l knowledge bears the traces of the values, attitudes, and ide-
ological commitments of those who first formulated it. Along
with objective intentions, subjective agendas shape and shade
the versions of truth people form. Deconstruction's role in
critical consciousness is to help identify and subvert the tacit
asymmetrical hierarchies and contest the dominance of the
so-called common-sense, natural order of things.
The value of deconstruction in critical practice reveals
itself in analyses of the role of language in knowledge-making.
A disconcerting realization often strikes us that the meanings
of the words we use can be remarkably imprecise. The speak-
er, rather than the language structure or the communications
process, must continually adjust meanings to suit his or her
purposes within particular contexts. Meanings of words, in a
too-real sense, are jury-rigged. They are provisional con-
veyances useful at particular times and particular places. Our
sense of intellectual foreboding grows: If this is the case, then,
indeed, things may not always be what they seem at first,
second, or even third glance. Not only can word meanings be
imprecise, but they can also contain all but imperceptible
values, intentions, and consequences that extend beyond the
particular time and place constraints imposed upon the role of
language in a specific communication act. Moreover, these
values, intentions, and consequences may have negative
Critical Theory 23

ramifications. Those that concern critical theory are the con-

cealed forms of oppression and coercion, and deconstruction
reveals them.
The many vagaries of language can both obscure and repro-
duce the power-knowledge relationship. Ludwig Wittgenstein
(1953) described a characteristic of language that helps power
relations to function obscurely. Like virtually all other senti-
ent humans, he observed that the meanings of words are often
relative, so relative in fact that one can think of words as
referring to groups of meanings. He adduced the word "tall."
Centuries-old redwoods are tall, the World Trade Center is
tall, and a sixth-grader fresh from a hormonal explosion and
now three inches taller than any of his classmates is tall.
Wittgenstein considered the sets of characteristics that
constitute meanings of words like "tall" to be analogous to
family resemblances. Like family members, words that belong
to a group of meanings share some, but not necessarily all of
the family characteristics. No single trait is an absolute require-
ment for membership. Meaning forms from sets of characteris-
tics amalgamated in a given context at a particular time and
place. Thus, message receivers must construe and interpret
meaning. The meaning is conditional, and it is socially con-
structed.
Ambiguity of language and meaning is hardly a novel con-
cept. Plato based his distrust of poets on ambiguity's poten-
tially destabilizing effects. Poet and literary critic William
Empson wrote a book in 1963 describing and categorizing
seven types of ambiguity. In fact, poets, writers, musicians
and artists exploit ambiguity to marvelous ends. For example,
ambiguity provides literature with aesthetic richness. But,
critical awareness includes the understanding that the ambigui-
ties of ordinary language and meaning can nourish the asym-
metries of power that produce oppressive social structures.
Accordingly, deconstruction examines ambiguities of language
to identify those unvoiced implications and alternate mean-
ings that authorize coercion.
A n analogy from the specialized language and logic of the
social and behavioral sciences underscores the instability and
relativity that can turn ordinary language into an instrument
of power. Take the familiar terms "concept," "operational
24 Critical Art Pedagogy

definition," and "construct." By traditional definition, a con-

cept is an abstract reference to an observable thing. A tree,
dog, airplane, cactus, height, color, are all concepts because
they have observable referents. A construct, however, is unob-
servable. Intelligence, learning, personality, talent, creativity,
and so forth are constructs. A n operational definition refers to
the process of designating a provisional definition for a con-
struct to make the abstract idea or phenomenon more or less
observable and measurable. It is a consciously concocted defini-
tion a researcher uses to make an invisible internal state visi-
ble. The observed measures then constitute research data used
to build conclusions about the construct. Examples abound in
the psychological sciences where researchers often use physio-
logical measures to define emotional states. A high respiration
rate, for example, becomes a marker for excitement, anger or,
fear. A low respiration rate indicates boredom, contentment
or depression.
The significance for critical inquiry is that the observable,
measurable criteria researchers use to demonstrate the pre-
sence of constructs are not actually properties of the phenom-
enon the construct purportedly represents. Rather, they are
markers or indications the researchers impose, often on the
basis of questionable assumptions. They are indicators im-
posed by particular human beings with particular purposes at
particular times and places. While not altogether arbitrary,
they are merely provisional versions. As such, they are as
vulnerable to the influence of ideology and values as other
types of knowledge. Constructs defined by operational defini-
tions are inherently hypothetical and often ambiguous. They
bear assigned meanings. They are symbols. They are in a
literal sense, metaphors. They are made-up. They are the
menu, not the dinner. They are also a focal point for critical
theory's concerns about how particular knowledge is formed
and the claims one can legitimately make for it. While opera-
tional definitions can be useful, deconstruction and other
forms of critical analysis question their limits as intellectual
tools for generating truth.
One problem with operational definitions is that the ac-
curacy and precision of meanings of constructs rarely generate
universal agreement, even among the researchers who use
Critical Theory 25

them. A s Jerome Bruner (1990) reported, psychologist

Stanley Schacter reviewed several studies of emotion and
found the same operational definitions—usually physiological
measures like respiration and heart rate—used as measures of a
quite disparate range of emotions. Happiness and fear may be
accompanied by much the same changes in heart rates and
breathing patterns. The measures are not always discrete, valid
and reliable. For this reason, better quantitative researchers
"triangulate," or seek multiple indicators of a phenomenon by
using several measures. But, even collections of operation-
alized measures have limitations; they are not the phenome-
non itself.
The problem of the stability of constructs deepens when
one ignores, forgets or misuses the provisional, symbolic,
metaphoric nature of operational definitions. The nature of
the symbol gets substituted for the unobservable phenomenon.
A construct, which in the first place can be equivocally signi-
fied by many symbols, is further decentered by the tendency
to mistake it for the thing it represents. This metonymic
switch occurs repeatedly both in the specialized language of
schooling and knowledge production, and in the more richly
varied languages of everyday life. When used to best ad-
vantage, a hypothetical construct still reflects only part of a
reality; it does not embody it. To assume a one-to-one corres-
pondence is to invite error. No matter how precise the langu-
age in which they are described may seem, constructs and oper-
ational definitions remain imprecise, mutable and uncertain.
The IQ score is an operational definition for the construct
intelligence. As time has passed, we have come to regard the
single IQ score as intelligence itself. Most people think of no
other indicators when assessing a student's intelligence. Social
skills, physical abilities, adeptness at defining problems and
devising solutions, perceptual sensitivity, visual creativity, and
other types of abilities—somehow all of these are irrelevant
to intelligence. But even a desultory look at the history of the
IQ test reveals privilege granted to groups with certain
ideological interests.
The IQ test developed in France in the early twentieth
century to sort individuals into groups, each to receive
differing amounts of limited educational resources based on its
26 Critical Art Pedagogy

members' perceived abilities. Access to education was con-

sidered wisely monitored if a group's worth to French society
hinged on its ability to learn. French educational adminis-
trators asked psychologist Alfred Binet to design a test to
predict which students would be likely to do well in school and,
inversely, to identify those on whom the scarce educational
resources would be wasted.
From today's critical perspective, the problem as far as
liberté, egalité, fraternité was concerned was that "ability to
learn" and "worth to society" are complex variables governed
by many interactive, covert factors, including social class.
The French intelligentsia at the turn of the century remained
in thrall to social Darwinism, an ideology advancing the belief
that those in the lower socio-economic groups deserved to be
there because of a lack of those qualities that marked the
upper classes: ability, intelligence, grace, breeding, morality,
and so on. Trying to improve the lot of the lower classes was,
therefore, futile. Trying to educate them was preposterous.
Any resources spent on schooling the lower classes would go
to waste in view of the menial occupations they inevitably
pursued. Gardeners and kitchen maids had no need for basic
literacy, much less the graceful manners of the educated upper
classes. Indeed, educated lower classes, expensive to start with,
might even be more costly and could become more trouble-
some than if they remained unlettered. Critical consciousness
suspects that, in reality, limited room existed in the schools
because limited room existed in the upper registers of the
socio-economic hierarchy.
In any event, at the turn of the century, a troubled time
for Europe, educators sensed the advent of World War I and
knew that educated lower classes would produce poor pros-
pects for foot-soldiers. Perhaps Binet and the French educa-
tors had noble intentions; indeed, they drew upon the legiti-
mate sciences of the day. Nevertheless, class bias appears to
have operated systemically throughout the IQ testing project.
Not surprisingly, the critical perspective views the IQ test
as an instrument for creating and preserving status distinctions
by allocating educational resources differentially. Thus, it re-
produces asymmetrical socio-economic hierarchies. At the
top, the rich few remain rich and few. The basis for the test is
Critical Theory 27

the construct of intelligence concocted and construed as a

single general ability. As a single ability, it was relatively easy
to use the test to discern degrees of its presence and absence.
It neatly matched the reproduction process, and because it did,
the power elite co-opted the IQ test as way to award privilege
to some groups and to marginalize others.
The point is not the routine task of assigning historical
blame. The point is to develop a critical understanding that
can help us transform present realities that parallel the histori-
cal account and to liberate ourselves in the process.
The critical history of the construct of intelligence and
the IQ test should rightfully become a regretted memory in
education. Today, many people know about the cultural biases
inherent in IQ tests. In fact, as Young (1990) noted, questions
about the justice of IQ test ramifications have even reached
the courts. This public debate is a healthy sign of developing
critical awareness: What was once accepted as objective truth
actually arose out of a collaboration between behavioral
scientists and educational politicians. Oppressive policies were
formulated and implemented on the basis of a testing program
based, in turn, on the authority provided by a single construct,
which because of its fundamentally subjective nature, shares
fallibility and ambiguity with other forms of human thought
and language. Critical analysis both demythologizes the IQ
test and reveals the process by which it was devised to be of
questionable legitimacy.
Critical theory aims less at purging all knowledge of
ideological influence than at decentering claims of truth, trans-
forming them, and re-orienting them toward emancipatory
ideals. Critical theory hardly advocates repudiation of reason;
instead, it questions the principles by which reason operates
(McCarthy, 1991).
The potential of critical theory and associated philoso-
phies as methods of understanding increases with the misappli-
cation of reductionistic scientific methodologies to the social,
psychological and political dimensions of human affairs.
Critical theory and deconstruction cut across traditional disci-
pline boundaries to ground the intellectual process of critical
consciousness in the human mind and heart.
28 Critical Art Pedagogy

From the critical perspective, we understand that what

counts as legitimate knowledge emerges from a process that
has a lot in common with the use of hypothetical constructs
and operational definitions in positivist forms of inquiry. Ideo-
logical interests begin to dominate surreptitiously in all forms
of knowledge. But constructs are vulnerable to multiple sym-
bolic misuse, and they are, like any other form of knowledge,
constructed in social contexts and laden with the values and
ideological commitments of the people creating them.

Other Critical Concepts

The concept of hegemony is another important component
of critical theory's intellectual capital. "Hegemony" refers to
domination sustained by the indirect and tacit cooperation of
those under oppression. The myth of equality and social
mobility through education illustrates hegemony in action.
People collaborate with their oppressors by believing enabling
myths and accepting the premise that what is good for the
power elite is also good for the disadvantaged. Institutions and
such components of our culture as entertainment, language,
literature, churches, and, in particular, schools, extend the
process of hegemony. For example, this sub rosa process helps
those who fail at school to believe that bad luck, personal
inability, or lack of effort explains their predicament. We
have here as Young (1990) pointed out, a contemporary
version of Hegel's "coercive illusion."
Praxis is another important concept in critical theory.
"Praxis" is work that interacts with life and community
concerns and is contextualized in human values. It is practice
united with theory, subjectivity united with objectivity, action
united with value. Praxis is practical activity engaged in
human interests as opposed to "bottom-line" concerns like
the profit motive or deskilled, mechanically controlled effi-
ciency. Critical art pedagogy conceives of art as a form of
praxis. Critical art pedagogy adopts art-as-praxis as its model
with art instruction grounded in immediate human experience
and value rather than abstracted as a sequence of design
problems or co-opted by commercial interests. Traditional art
instruction emphasizing the improvement of specific produc-
tion techniques as its goal does not constitute praxis. We call
Critical Theory 29

such art education techne, the antithesis of praxis. Techne is a

form of mindless, soul-less, dehumanizing labor coercively
performed only for profit (McLaren, 1989; Kincheloe, 1991).
Finally, the concepts of "life world" and "colonization of
the life world" are also central terms in those critical theory-
based dialogues that can help guide a critical art pedagogy. Life
world is the lived experience of individuals as they, them-
selves, consciously perceive it and as they construct it in
active engagement with the culture. "Colonization of the life
world" is a pejorative phrase that refers to the subjugation or
distorting influences of power interests on the life world. This
chapter explores ways that schools colonize student life
worlds and their art worlds shortly.

A Brief History of Critical Theory

The philosophical wellsprings of critical theory reach back to
German philosophers Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm
Friedrich Hegel, and Karl Marx (Held, 1980; Young, 1990;
Morrow, 1994). Kant took the position that reason actually
places certain limits on knowledge, and he believed that hu-
man experience can legitimately include other forms of knowl-
edge like those based on faith or intuition. Hegel later advo-
cated the concept of emancipation from coercive illusions,
which are socially or culturally transmitted beliefs that effect
social control. In some societies, ghost stories told as caution-
ary tales keep children close to home and on good behavior.
The belief that schools promote equality in a democracy is a
current example of a coercive illusion. Karl Marx's social and
economic theories influenced critical theory. Briefly put,
critical theorists generally agree with Marx's view that in-
equalities based on social class are inherently unjust and can be
ameliorated.
Critical theory proper emerged in Europe prior to World
War II. The Frankfurt School, as the early adherents were
known, was a group of intellectuals who sought to enunciate a
Marxist theory of culture (Held, 1980). The Frankfurt School
sought to distinguish itself from those other Marxists of the
time who were interested primarily in economics and com-
munist social systems (Pinar and Bowers, 1992). Members of
the Frankfurt School especially distanced themselves from
30 Critical Art Pedagogy

Soviet and Chinese Communism and other totalitarian applica-

tions of Marx's theories. The early critical theorists sought to
develop a new interpretation of Marxism that could serve as
an intellectual foundation for their idealistic concepts of demo-
cracy and culture. Members of the Frankfurt school also
challenged the roles of the mass media and the government in
the determination of the character of the culture. They saw in
both an excessive influence and control that often operated in
an unrestrained and tacit way, far beyond the light of popular
awareness. Further, they considered it no mere coincidence
that the power-driven process whereby this influence and
control operated often promoted the interests of the rich and
powerful and produced negative consequences for others.
Critical theorists sought to reach their goal of emancipation
by revealing, creating an awareness of, and resisting hidden
forms of power (Kincheloe, 1991).
The early critical theorists envisioned society's greatest
potential as being accessible through action that begins with
social critique. Critiques of the past served to cast possibilities
for the future. To borrow Turgenev's metaphor in Fathers
and Sons, they sought to clear the field before tilling the soil.
The Frankfurt School's philosophy came to be called "critical
theory" apparently because of its emphasis on social critique
as a prerequisite for improving social problems.
The official name for the Frankfurt School was The
Institute for Social Research. In 1923, it was established in the
tradition of the European patronage system that had sup-
ported artists and scholars for centuries. The son of a wealthy
merchant subsidized it as a semi-autonomous department of
the University of Frankfurt. His financial endowment allowed
members the freedom to follow any direction their intellectual
pursuits and exchanges of ideas suggested. The Institute's over-
arching project became the formulation of a social philosophy
of culture (Held, 1980).
The contribution of the first director, Carl Grunberg, was
to identify classical Marxism as a method of social research.
Previously, Marxism had been considered primarily an eco-
nomic and political philosophy. Philosopher Douglas Kellner
(1989) noted that for the early critical theorists, Marxism was
simply a theoretical framework for developing an under-
Critical Theory 31

standing of the nature and causes of social change. Having sur-

vived the ravages of World War I, the instabilities of the Euro-
pean economic climate, and the destabilizing effects of
European nationalism, and having witnessed the social ramifi-
cations of such repressive ideologies as social Darwinism,
young European intellectuals naturally embraced social change
as a topic of great significance. Consciousness, culture, aes-
thetics, ideology, language, economics—they studied all of
these topics as relevant components of social change. Critical
theory's chief tools were its ideas about how social class
distinctions and power relations among them influenced the
human condition.
Grunberg believed that as a research method, Marxist-
based critical theory should avoid questions of ultimate, im-
mutable laws of truth and timeless, abstract meaning. He saw
these questions as the territorial claim of the scientific
method. Instead, the concepts of culture and social change
that critical theory developed took up truth and meaning only
as they occur at a particular time and place for particular
individuals. According to early critical thought, truth and
meaning are relative and are constructed within a specific
social context by particular individuals. Grunberg and his
cohorts recognized the dynamic and diverse nature of society
and the dangers that inhere in the positivist tendency to de-
scribe this complexity solely through the reductionistic lens of
the scientific method. This concept of research established,
from the very beginning of the Frankfurt School, critical
theory's fundamental skepticism toward science-based, posi-
tivist forms of knowledge.
David Held (1980) isolated a number of tenets of Marxism
that directly influenced critical theory. One of these is the ob-
servation that Western capitalist societies organized them-
selves around the exchange of commodities, which they
produce primarily for profit rather than for humanitarian pur-
poses relating to the quality of life. This tenet suggests that
one can apply the concept of art-as-commodity to a critical
theory of art and art education. Critical art educators would
regard as suspect an art pedagogy that insists upon training
artists as producers of art objects designed primarily for com-
mercial appeal. Similarly, artists should ideologically resist
32 Critical Art Pedagogy

producing art "for the market" comprised of elite collectors.

Instead, critical art pedagogy encourages artists, art teachers,
and students to construct an art pedagogy that goes beyond
the usual economic and instrumental purposes to provide art
experiences that serve more universal human interests.
Another Marxist influence on critical theory with implica-
tions for a critical art pedagogy is the tendency of capitalist
socio-economic systems toward reification, the assumption
that products are autonomous, independent from human con-
texts, with a natural, inherent value of their own. Some
observers use the term "fetish" to describe such a product.
Modernism in art, a primary foundation of traditional art
education, succumbs to this illusion when it incorporates the
notion that art is separate from the artist and viewer and is
disengaged and decontextualized from meaning, interpretation
and value. A later chapter explores the ideas of modernism
and postmodernism in more detail. For now, critical art peda-
gogy advocates rescinding the dependence on modernism as a
foundation for traditional art education and articulating a new
nexus of theory and practice from a foundation of post-
modernism.
The third, and perhaps the most significant, influence
Marxism exerted on critical theory is the observation that
capitalism fosters social disharmony. In other words, capital-
ism fosters contradictions that lead to antagonisms between
producers and managers, teachers and students, experts and lay-
persons, superiors and subordinates, and so forth. This asym-
metry of power inherent in capitalist systems leads inevitably
to conflict as unequal classes compete economically, cultural-
ly, politically and educationally. A critical art pedagogy would
recognize and affirm this criticism and join critical theory's
struggle against hierarchical power relations.
Critical art pedagogy focuses on art's role in the cultural
and educational sphere of this struggle. It envisions art instruc-
tion as a useful recruit in the battle for democratic ideals
through schooling. Critical art instruction can help us achieve
this goal because of its function of linking the individual to
cultural group realities through the exchange of shared sym-
bols and meanings. This encourages self-reflection, establishes
individual and group identity, and awakens critical conscious-
Critical Theory 33

ness. Shared symbols and meanings conveyed through art can

become dangerous memories that enrich lived experience and
sustain struggles toward ideals. Art is praxis in critical art
pedagogy.
Marxism's identification of capitalism's crisis tendencies
also influenced critical theory. The concept of "legitimation"
crisis refers to the withdrawal of support for a socio-political
structure characterized by domination. Those in subordinate
positions may reach a critical or class consciousness that
prompts them to question the natural order of things. They
no longer accept the common-sense versions of normality
which asymmetrical power relations construct to maintain
themselves. Subordinates loose the incentive to believe. The
asymmetry of power thus precipitates the legitimation crisis.
Most critical philosophers consider legitimation crises
inevitable, as is the peoples' development of critical conscious-
ness. Legitimation crises disrupt virtually every social institu-
tion, and education and art education are no exceptions. In
fact, many critical scholars see contemporary schooling prob-
lems as legitimation crises. Robert Young (1990) noted that
governmental intrusiveness and its oppressive structures, com-
bined with its failures to manage social problems like crime,
poverty, and racism, undermine both trust in government and
the people's shared sense of what is meaningful and valuable.
As the oppression continues, people conclude, for example,
that if no good jobs are available, striving to do well in school
or working hard to get ahead are useless efforts. Why bother?
Work becomes only a means of economic survival. The possi-
bility of work as a meaningful, valuable activity disappears.
Legitimation crises are, in essence, crises of meaning. A s
Young pointed out, people may look to governments or insti-
tutions like schools to solve legitimation crises, but the institu-
tions are helpless because they themselves contain the sources
of distortion. Greater efficiency or more fundamentally dehu-
manizing work only produces (or reproduces) more problems,
not solutions. Solutions come through the critical actions of
individuals, not from institutions that reconstruct oppressive
social forms. Critical art pedagogy recognizes and seeks to
avoid these solipsistic dynamics and situates the context of
meaning at the center of instruction and learning in art.
34 Critical Art Pedagogy

The historical processes of the marginalization of art

instruction in the schools and the limitations tacitly placed on
access to art instruction—well known problems associated
with traditional art education—become in the context of criti-
cal art pedagogy symptoms of a legitimation crisis. The dislo-
cation of art and the aesthetic as central features of human
existence leaves a vacuum strong enough to force the discon-
tent up hill—that is, up the echelons of the power hierarchy.
In 1930, Max Horkheimer replaced Grunberg as director
of the Institute for Social Research, and under his leadership,
the Frankfurt School's Marxist influence continued. For good
reasons, Horkheimer emphasized the multidisciplinary charac-
ter of critical theory: Not all members of the Frankfurt
School were philosophers. Psychologist Erich Fromm, literary
critic Walter Benjamin, and aesthetician Theodor Adorno
were prominent members. Horkheimer himself was a socio-
logist. Since the members of the Institute represented diverse
disciplines, they spoke univocally on a single issue only rarely.
The principle that eventually united them was Horkheimer's
theme of connecting philosophical theorizing about society to
specific practices of improving it. This one aspect of critical
theory makes it an especially promising foundation for educa-
tional knowledge and practice.
As Held (1980) observed during his analysis of Hork-
heimer's early speeches, a second theme under his directorship
was the concept of studying human beings as members of a
community rather than as isolated individuals. This concept
occupies a central place in critical art pedagogy, especially
with respect to its repudiation of art's traditional reliance on
the culture of modernity.
Held found a third theme of critical theory in Hork-
heimer's work, the importance of memory to the struggle for
emancipation. As Kincheloe (1991) noted, contemporary
scholar Henry Giroux uses the expression "dangerous mem-
ory" for the meaningful recollections of the past, particularly
past oppression and disenfranchisement, that impel current
struggles for liberation. Powerful groups often seek to change
versions of the past in ways compatible with their current
interests. Memory is the tool that creates the awareness
necessary for uncovering or routing out repressive forms of
Critical Theory 35

power. A n individual's culturally endowed group affiliations

are vital constituents of identity and self awareness. In fact,
they determine an individual's lived connections with other in-
dividuals. They reside in memory. The tendencies of art and
art education to open access to often obscure inner realities
and meanings make it a valuable critical tool. Critical art
pedagogy underscores the ways art can harbor dangerous
memories. Thus, a critical art pedagogy should make contact
with dangerous memory and bring it to the surface in educa-
tional encounters with art. As such, in a curriculum concerned
with liberation, art becomes a subject for all students, not just
the so-called "talented" few.
The 1930s, of course, saw the rise of the Nazis, prompt-
ing most members of the Institute for Social Research to flee
Germany. They re-established the Institute in Geneva in 1933
and moved it again in 1935 to Columbia University. Members
of the Frankfurt School worked effectively in the U . S . to
produce a body of ideas that later influenced the New Left
historians, and they attracted a large following of radical stu-
dents and intellectuals during the 1960s. These groups drew on
critical theory as a powerful source of insight and inspiration
for the social protest movements of the day. Some important
examples include Herbert Marcuse's Eros and Civilization
(1955), his One-Dimensional Man (1964), and Erich Fromm's
Escape from Freedom (1941). Marcuse critiqued capitalism's
tendencies to establish an ever-increasing technical bureaucracy
that threatened the fundamental character of human nature.
Fromm took as his intellectual mission the reconciliation of
Freud's psychological ideas with the economic and socio-
logical ideas of Marx. He underscored Freud's idea that an in-
dividual's identity forms to a great extent by social relation-
ships with others.
A second generation of critical theorists continues today,
among them Jurgen Habermas, its leading voice. Born in 1929
and raised in Nazi Germany, Habermas adopted radical social,
political, and philosophical positions as a young man. He be-
came a student of Adorno before becoming a member of the
Frankfurt School. Habermas's important writings include
Knowledge and Human Interests, (1968), Theory and Prac-
tice (1971), and Legitimation Crisis, (1976). In these works,
36 Critical Art Pedagogy

he stressed the themes of self-emancipation and radical demo-

cratization of society even more emphatically than his prede-
cessors did. Like them, however, he explored philosophical posi-
tions supporting the unities of theory and practice, facts and
value, and truth and virtue, and the connections between pow-
er and ideology that tend to create then perpetuate sources of
domination. He was among the first critical theorists to express
concern over the influence of Marxism on the development
of totalitarian, positivist-based political and economic systems.
A variety of competing philosophical traditions and pat-
terns of social thought influenced Habermas's eclectic work,
but he remains most interested in power-knowledge relation-
ships. His theory of cognitive interests centers on identifying
conditions that make knowledge possible and on specifying
how knowledge relates to human activity (McCarthy, 1991).
Knowledge comes about, according to Habermas, as a result of
engaging in activities that promote self- and species preser-
vation. Habermas's theory of knowledge, then, begins as a
practical concept, contextualized in human life rather than as
an abstract, ethereal concept. Activities pursuant to self- and
species preservation fall into three categories, which he called
"cognitive interests." Each interest, in turn, leads to a type of
knowledge.
The first cognitive interest is work. People use tools and
technical procedures to sustain themselves by controlling and
manipulating nature in ways conducive to survival. The
second cognitive interest is communication, the use of speech
and language to effect and extend survival. This communi-
cation includes exchanges of jointly understood symbols and
meanings in social contexts more or less governed by rules of
conduct and expectations and designed to link individuals with
groups. Work and communication are joined by a third cogni-
tive interest, reason. Reason includes such human activities as
self-reflection and rationality consistent with maintaining free-
dom and the responsibility for self-determination. Activities
involved with this cognitive interest generate the conditions
that bring about the type of knowledge Habermas called
"emancipatory knowledge." These cognitive interests func-
tion independently to contribute to knowledge formation, but
they are built-in, structural components of human experience.
Critical Theory 37

Habermas's model of the relation of knowledge to human

activity, the second part of his theory of cognitive interests,
also features triads, but it varies somewhat from his interest-
knowledge model. Humans, he decided, have three types of
general interests, as opposed to cognitive interests. They are
technical, practical, and emancipatory. These three interests
produce, in turn, three types of social activities, which he
called "media." These media include work, interaction, and
power. Habermas defined work as "instrumental action."
"Interaction" is simply language and speech. "Power" denotes
asymmetrical social and economic relations which give rise to
the restriction, oppression, and dependency one class forces
upon another.
Finally, interests and media make possible three forms of
knowledge Habermas called "sciences": (1) the empirical-
analytic, (2) the historical-hermeneutic, and (3) the critical.
Empirical-analytic forms of knowledge refer to what we
normally call science: inquiry and the results of inquiry based
on the scientific method and its assumptions—in short, conclu-
sions based on controlled, selective observations of the physi-
cal world. Historical-hermeneutical knowledge is characterized
by interpretation, reflection, and sustained rational thought.
Critical science is the more or less systematic development of
knowledge that identifies impediments to social justice and
that promotes emancipation. Critical science comes as a result
of examining and revealing such sources of oppression as
systematically distorted communication and asymmetrical
power structures.
Habermas believes that both individuals and society have
the capacity to fundamentally evolve toward a more advanced
form of social life in which the ideals of freedom and justice
become realities. Critical and emancipatory knowledge makes
this evolution possible. The action counterpart of emancipa-
tory knowledge is praxis, which is composed of both work
(instrumental action) and interaction (communication or the
exchange of shared symbols). We should note that Habermas
conceived of both work and interaction as separate and dis-
tinct. He considered the joining of the two in praxis a
relatively rare occurrence.
38 Critical Art Pedagogy

Art teachers roaming the broad Habermasian landscape

may ponder the role of art knowledge in the theory of cogni-
tive interests. But reflection on this question reveals the signifi-
cance that critical theory can hold for the task of revitalizing
art pedagogy by reconstructing its foundations. If they can be
made to transcend the instrumentality of techne, art and art
education constitute praxis and serve as models for praxis in
other types of human activities and knowledge. Art and art
education include the Habermasian criterion for work: The pur-
poseful manipulation of entities in the natural world encom-
passes artistic production. Further, since the ancient shamans
inscribed line drawings of bison on the walls of the caves at
Lascaux and Altamira, art has likewise included the exchange
of shared symbols—that is to say, Habermas's communicative
interaction and art's iconic meaning. Art is an amalgam of
the types of knowledge and activities that constitute praxis,
and art-as-praxis is one of the most important contributions
critical theory makes to art education in the postmodern era
as well as one of the most important contributions that criti-
cal art pedagogy can offer to society's schools.
Habermas neglected to explore art's status as a form of
critical knowledge and activity. Unlike his mentor Adorno, he
shows little interest in aesthetics and art. Nevertheless, the
idea of art and art education as praxis, which Marx defined as
"sensuous human activity," actually de-mystifies art, bringing
it closer to human knowledge and activity. Rudolf Arnheim's
(1969) concept of "visual thinking" posited much the same
effect. The concept of art as praxis requires continuing
development and refinement as critical theory and other
resources revitalize art education's foundations.
Critical theory has inevitably influenced a number of con-
temporary thinkers specifically interested in education and
schooling. These include Paulo Friere, Henry Giroux, Michael
Apple, Joe Kincheloe, Peter McLaren, Robert Young,
Cameron McCarthy, Thomas McCarthy, and Maxine Greene.
While contemporary scholars may hesitate to label them-
selves critical theorists, critical theory infuses their work as
they apply the themes of critical theory to the problems of
education and schooling. Their writings challenge accepted
interpretations and mark new frontiers of understanding in an
Critical Theory 39

education with emancipation as its goal. The next section

explores the potential of critical theory as a source of under-
standing of schooling in general.

Critical Theory and Schooling

In few realms has the hierarchical structure of inequality
become more firmly entrenched than our schools. The idea
that schools reproduce society is hardly novel. John Dewey
promoted the need for an educated populace in a democratic
society nearly a century ago. But Dewey understood, as Robert
Young (1990) noted, that the unquestioned benefits of edu-
cating the populace would be accompanied by the unintended,
potentially harmful consequences of co-opting education for
purposes of the national state in ways that could compromise
education's role in achieving and preserving individual liberty.
In Democracy and Education (1916), Dewey suggested that
the so-called social practicalities and efficiencies would
inevitably lead to the subordination of some members of
society. In turn, a form of schooling would result that
amounted to little more than disciplinary training rather than
the intellectual social, emotional, and aesthetic development
he envisioned.
The work of educational theorist Joel Spring (1976)
coheres with critical theory's themes although his scholarship
slightly predates critical theory's emergence as a participant
in the educational discourse. In The Sorting Machine, Spring
extended Dewey's thesis and made a strong case for the idea
that schools have been used mainly to meet the manpower
needs of the military-industrial complex. Schools accomplish
this by sorting students into a hierarchy of unequally valued
groups formed on the basis of their individual abilities as
defined by society's current economic, political, and security
interests. Spring cited the National Defense Education Act of
1958, motivated by the Soviet launching of the Sputnik
satellite in 1957, as an example of this sorting process. The
Soviet victory in the race to space fueled fears that the United
States would lose the Cold War because of inadequate educa-
tional attention to science and technology subjects.
Political debates in 1958 centered on linking our defense
requirements to educational policy and curriculum. Since these
40 Critical Art Pedagogy

requirements were technological and scientific, the National

Defense Education Act (NDEA) and other educational policies
emphasized the development of science and math skills.
Budgets were dramatically increased to support testing pro-
grams designed to identify the best science and math students
and to support special summer training symposia for science
teachers.
From today's perspective, the urgency that characterized
the debates about how education should help protect our demo-
cracy seems an overdrawn, hysterical reaction. Nevertheless it
led to draconian educational policies that stifled our culture
and our children's connections to it by relegating the arts to
the margins of the curriculum and society. This episode from
our recent past underscores the need for today's educators to
develop critical understandings of how schooling connects
with its contemporary social and cultural contexts. The 1958
sorting machine neglected those functions of education that
center on personal, intellectual, social, and artistic growth.
Further, students from disenfranchised racial groups, the
female gender, and lower economic classes remained disen-
franchised during and after the science and technology
hysteria.
The same year that Spring published his book, Bowles and
Gintis (1976) contributed an analysis of schooling that helped
set the stage for contemporary critical theorists. Their book,
Schooling in Capitalist America (1976) presented a second
model of the marginalization process in schooling, a process
they called "social reconstruction." They argued that the
school duplicates those conditions in the workplace that, in
Marxist terms, sustain the system of class structure that sub-
ordinates the lower classes and preserves the status of the
power elite.
Schools, many critical educators believe, mainly seek to
prepare students for the workplace. A critical perspective
reveals the cynicism that informs this mission and its ironic
result: The alienated, disenfranchised student generally be-
comes the alienated, disenfranchised worker. In regimented,
bureaucratized, authoritarian work environments, workers
enjoy little control over their labor, and alienation follows. In
regimented, bureaucratized school environments, students
Critical Theory 41

have little influence over their instruction, the curriculum, or

evaluations of their progress. Thus, the system by which
schools mirror society's distortions produces alienation rather
than liberation. A s schooling became appropriated for eco-
nomic functions considered important to the military-
industrial complex, the focus on the democratic ideal of
education as a liberating process became blurred.
The process of social reconstruction extends beyond
social and economic dimensions to affect the psyche and the
soul of the individual student. Bowles and Gintis observed that
schooling's reproduction of social relationships inures students
to the tedious rigors of the workplace culture. Schooling also
influences the development of personality, deportment, style
of presentation, self image, and it influences the adoption of
those social class markers that indicate an individual's fitness
for particular job types and levels.
Even more emphatic in describing the social reproduction
process, Peter McLaren (1989) excoriated schooling's ten-
dencies to delegitimize students on the lower rungs of the
socio-economic hierarchy. He described schooling as func-
tioning so as to validate the ways certain approved forms of
knowledge become arrayed on class-based tiers that recon-
struct such social problems such as poverty, racism and
sexism. This regimen fragments the democratic processes that
schools are supposed to support as competitiveness, con-
formity, and ethnocentrism become the values that drive
these processes.
From the critical perspective, schools often replicate prob-
lematic aspects of society by following the so-called "hidden
curriculum." Broadly speaking, the hidden curriculum refers to
all of the learning that takes place beyond the overt inten-
tions of teachers, administrators and curriculum designers.
This learning happens both implicitly and explicitly through
the processes of socialization or acculturation (they are simi-
lar concepts). Most educators know that schooling operates as
a culture, which means that values, attitudes, meaning, ex-
pectations, codes, and all conceivable forms of thought and
behavior are transmitted socially, outside the boundaries of for-
mal instruction. This hidden curriculum is powerful, perhaps
even more powerful than the institutionalized curriculum.
42 Critical Art Pedagogy

Peer influence, that most potent motivator, is part of the

hidden curriculum. But so are school regulations. Take dress
codes, for example. If students must wear school uniforms,
they develop one set of attitudes toward authority and indi-
viduality. If dress reflects personal preferences, students form
quite another set of attitudes and values.
Critical theorists take an interest in how the hidden cur-
riculum shapes individuals' attitudes about authority, power
and freedom, and they generally agree that equality in the
schools is a myth. Our schools do not reproduce an egalitari-
an, democratic, meritocratic social order, nor do they offer
social mobility. Considerable evidence indicates that schooling
benefits the affluent more than those in lower socio-economic
groups and others disadvantaged by race or gender. McLaren
described the popular, common-sense assumption that schools
are meritocratic as a tautology: students are successful because
they control cultural markers society relies on to determine
those who deserve the rewards. Critical theorists, among many
others, recognize that a major factor in merit and its rewards
are race (read "white") and class (read "middle" and "afflu-
ent").

Neo-Marxism: Contemporary Interpretations of

Marxism and Critical Theory
"Conscientious Marxism," "theoretical Marxism," "cultural
Marxism," and "neo-Marxism"—scholars adopt euphemisms
like these to differentiate garden variety Communism from
the application of Marxist principles to the project of
developing better understandings of contemporary social,
political, educational and cultural problems. The earlier inter-
pretations of Marxist theory that evolved into Communist
dogma are sometimes referred to as "vulgar" or "naive"
Marxism. The recent failure of the Soviet Union's Com-
munist political and economic systems erected on early inter-
pretations of Marxist theory by no means represents a con-
clusive repudiation of contemporary interpretations of Karl
Marx's ideas.
As noted earlier, from the 1930s on, the Frankfurt School
rejected the Marxism of Stalin and Mao and sought, instead,
to identify tenets of Marxism that could improve society and
Critical Theory 43

culture, especially in their democratic forms, through critical

analysis of how power relations shape them. Accordingly,
scholars continue to regard Marxist ideas as useful tools. U n -
fortunately, Cold War hyperbole and other sources of hostile
sentiment have produced pejorative associations with any-
thing Marxist that limit opportunities to develop detailed
understanding of Marxism. Therefore, a review of Marxism's
tenets can both expand an understanding of its contributions
to critical theory and critical art pedagogy, and "un-
demonize" the philosophy. The exercise can also help us
recover its potential as one among the scarce few intellectual
instruments likely to help us understand ourselves and the
complexities of our social interactions better. The following
section reviews the tenets of Marxism as they are often
applied in the contemporary vernacular and distinguishes
them from the earlier, naive interpretations.

The Base-Superstructure Relationship

One of the theoretical positions that differentiates neo-Marx-
ism from naive Marxism is the relationship between society's
base and its superstructure. The whole of the economic produc-
tion modalities of a society constitutes its base. Another way
to describe this base is as the system of economic relation-
ships within a society (Berger, 1995). The superstructure
consists of such social institutions as religion, education, the
art world, and so forth.
Naive Marxism holds to the notion that the base totally
determines the superstructure. This means that the base causes
the superstructure to function as it does. Meanwhile, society's
institutions, customs, culture—all of its characteristics—are
funded by one single influence: its economic system. Contem-
porary Marxist thought rejects this unilateral relationship,
seeing society's superstructure as too complex to be reducible
to a single determining factor. The application of neo-Marx-
ist thought to contemporary social critique must allow for the
inclusion of such important concepts as agency. Neo-Marxism
acknowledges that economic relations are significant in the
social construction of reality and of individual human con-
sciousness; however, so are other factors, including agency or
self-directed action.
44 Critical Art Pedagogy

Mass Culture
The application of those naive Marxist theories that resulted
in the Stalinist version of Communism recognized the power
of art. The Marxist theory of zhdanovism stipulates that the
elite can use art, music, theater, dance, and similar cultural
forms as instruments for controlling the masses (Berger,
1995). In the Stalinist era, this theory became the basis for
the policy that art should serve only the interests of the state.
A vapid, poster-like style of social realism ensued. It cele-
brated by literal visual depiction the heroics of Communist
workers and glorified labor as service to the people and the
Soviet state.
Neo-Marxism, of course, rejects the Communist embodi-
ment of zhdanovism, yet retains the concept as theory.
Particularly through its emergence from the Frankfurt School
as an influence on contemporary critical theory, neo-Marxism
underscores the idea that art and other cultural forms may
indeed take on ideological functions, especially in a capitalist
society. Further, the assignment of ideological functions often
proceeds tacitly. The purpose of incorporating ideological
function in an art form is to maintain the status quo a socio-
politico-economic hierarchy prefers by covertly manipulating
or suppressing critical awareness among the people. Contem-
porary critical theorists recognize that this concept works
most effectively in mass culture and the mass media. Critical
art pedagogy recognizes that traditional art education serves
as a vector of this type of control.
Among neo-Marxism's contributions to critical art peda-
gogy is its suspicion of the mass media, especially with regard
to their promotion of consumer mindsets and escapist enter-
tainment. These effects obscure the need to develop critical
consciousness and distract people from the task of revealing
and resisting tacit hegemonizing structures, especially in such
institutions as schools, museums, and other aspects of the art
world. B y unconsciously and uncritically acquiescing in the
blandishments of a corrupt mass media, people develop the
habit of conformity and eventually, they loose the will, vision
and means to become critical agents.
By providing the means to challenge the colonizing influ-
ences of the mass media, critical art pedagogy and other
Critical Theory 45

critically inspired educational modalities can encourage

passive consumers to become active producers of culture.

Class
The construct of class is fundamental to neo-Marxist social
and educational criticism. "Class" refers to the formation of
subgroups of people according to their economic resources.
Thus, class is influenced by the theory of base-superstructure
relations. Whereas the base determines class membership,
particular cultural characteristics and other aspects of super-
structure tend to be associated with each class so as to
differentiate it from other classes. For example, education,
dietary practices, recreational pursuits, vocational choices,
artistic and aesthetic preferences—these are distinguishing
features of classes shaped by economic resources.
Neo-Marxist social criticism focuses on those inequalities
among classes that result from an unequal distribution of
wealth and power. Nason (1992) estimated that 1 percent of
the U . S . population controls 40 percent of the country's
wealth. Critical theorists embrace this neo-Marxist theme to
challenge the popular myths that opportunities to succeed are
equally open to all, that justice disregards class, that educa-
tional achievement is accessible to everyone, and that hard
work can overcome class-bound limitations if the worker is
motivated and talented enough.
This last myth, a residual effect of nineteenth century
social Darwinism, explains the insidious, disingenuous, com-
mon-sense wisdom that those who fail simply lack the
necessary ability, values and determination. Furthermore, as
Berger (1995) observed, this belief may lead to the conclusion
that such forms of governmental or institutional support as
educational support for lower income groups are unnecessary,
wasteful, and ineffective since, with equal opportunity, people
succeed and people fail because of their individual merit. This
belief often infects the classroom where teachers' expecta-
tions of and attention to individual students often reflects
their class differences.
Rosenthall and Jacobson (1968) conducted an experiment
in which teachers at the Oak-Hall School were told that some
students identified by a specious test that Rosenthall and
46 Critical Art Pedagogy

Jacobson called the "Harvard Test of Inflicted Acquisition"

would be experiencing a "growth spurt" during the school
year. (One could also interpret this study as a demonstration
of teacher credulity before the posturing of scientific rigor
that typifies positivist inquiry.) The children identified as
"spurters" were actually randomly selected and no more intelli-
gent than their classmates. The study found that the children
whose teachers expected growth spurts significantly outper-
formed their counterparts. The children subject to high
teacher expectations not only improved more on academic
achievement measures than children not marked for growth
spurts, but their IQ scores increased as well.
We can draw two interpretations from Rosenthall and
Jacobson's study: (1) Children whose teachers expect them to
do well in fact demonstrate greater gains than children with
teachers who lack these expectations; and (2) teachers tend to
regard children who are not expected to do well but who suc-
ceed nonetheless as troublesome or uncooperative. In short,
teachers' expectations can be self-fulfilling prophecies. The
markers of social class, race, and gender are embedded influenc-
es that account for a great deal of the injustice in our schools.
In an ironic twist of typical scientific protocol, Rosenthall
replicated the study with rats and experimental psychologists.
The rats used by those researchers who were told that their
animals were particularly intelligent performed significantly
better on certain learning measures than the other lab rats.
The ordinary rats were, of course, actually identical to the
"intelligent" rats in every way except one: researcher expecta-
tions.

The Bourgeoisie, Petite Bourgeoisie, and Proletariat

From its inception, Marxist thought distinguished three
classes: The proletariat, the bourgeoisie, and the petite bour-
geoisie. Economic differences shape cultural differences
among the three. The bourgeoisie controls most of the wealth
and property and, therefore, most of the power in a society.
Its members own such means of economic production as fac-
tories, mines, and corporations. Therefore, they control the
proletariat, the workers, in material ways. Material or eco-
nomic control entails intellectual, ideological, social, and
Critical Theory 47

cultural control as well. The neo-Marxist and critical per-

spectives consider contemporary bourgeois values insipid,
complacent, artless capitulation to materialistic diversions and
uncritical conformity to middle class pseudo-virtues. "Bour-
geois" is, thus, a pejorative term. As Berger (1995) observed,
bourgeois sensibility presumes its own tastes to be bench-
marks, so that when a prole, having long yearned to reach
bourgeois status, finally does so, he will probably require spe-
cial training in etiquette, dress, behavior, artistic preference,
and so forth.
Petite bourgeoisie are the bourgeoisie's unwitting enablers.
They may be teachers, business people, performers, politi-
cians, musicians, writers, artists—anyone who helps maintain
the status quo. This group serves the power elite by producing
cultural forms like stories, films, art, songs, and instruction,
that celebrate bourgeois values, contribute to commodity
fetishism, and support social controls. The Western genre
provides an apt example. The Western cowboy hero depicted
in films, stories, and television programs was a fiercely inde-
pendent man of action, always in the right, always fighting
successfully against great odds, typically to repel threats that
Indians and other outlaws posed to upstanding white ranchers,
and then always saving the imperiled and helpless damsel. The
values this familiar genre extolled are unmistakably bourgeois.

Alienation
Economic inequity produces another problem of interest to
contemporary critique: alienation. In a society dominated by a
bourgeoisie, workers gradually lose their sense of connection
to a class identity, to other workers, to the elite classes, and
to work itself. Work ceases to be a source of meaning or plea-
sure when the worker becomes a tool for economic production
destined to benefit the bourgeoisie far more than the worker.
The alienation economic inequalities produce is both a
social and a psychological phenomenon. For the individual,
alienation is an emotionally palpable experience that Berger
(1995) described as a feeling of hollowness. Seeking to
mitigate the effects of alienation—to fill the internal void it
creates—the individual distracts himself or herself with such
jollifying strategies of the consumer culture as commodity
48 Critical Art Pedagogy

fetishism and consumer lust. But they offer no lasting remedy

for the alienation and other problems that arise from a
bourgeois society.
"Commodity fetishism," incidentally, refers to the trans-
position of human qualities and expectations from human rela-
tionships to objects, especially consumer products. Com-
modity fetishism thrives on alienation, which itself results
from the transformation of people into objects. Commodity
fetishism represents a search for meaning and fulfillment
primarily in materialistic acquisition instead of through social
relationships. The searcher assumes that objects supply the
sort of experience possible only in associations with other hu-
mans. It is a symbolic displacement of fulfillment.
Neo-Marxist-inspired critique suggests that commodity
fetishism serves to maintain the status quo, and thus benefits
the economic elite. A central process in the consumer culture,
commodity fetishism creates desires for consumer goods
chiefly through mass media advertising. A cycle ensues: Peo-
ple seek relief from the spiritual angst of alienation through
the artificial gratifications of consumer lust created by a monu-
mental advertizing industry. In turn, participation in the con-
sumer lust process produces more alienation and the commodi-
fication of self and others.
A number of thinkers have recognized advertizing as a
form of social control (Lefebvre, 1984; Enzenberger, 1974;
Berger, 1995). Advertizing imbues objects with symbolic
significance or with other properties that heighten their
desirability. People in its thrall build their identities around
products they own or would like to own, and they subordinate
the search for meaning and fulfillment through dignified work
and subjective relationships with others to the participation
processes of consumer culture. Acquisition yields status; one's
purchases reflect style or taste. But neo-Marxist social critique
underscores the distorting effects of advertizing on individuals
and on social institutions like schools.

Interpellation
Cultural forms like the visual arts, the mass media, and school-
ing tend to incorporate ideological commitments and then
covertly pass them on to participants. From an earlier age,
Critical Theory 49

Marshall McLuhan's slogan, "The medium is the message,"

seems to express this idea. A person watching a film often
identifies with a certain character or fantasizes that he or she
experiences the events the film depicts. When this happens,
the recipient tends subconsciously to accept the ideology in-
herent in the film. The process by which ideological associa-
tions embedded in an art form enter a viewer's psyche is called
"interpellation."

Hegemony
Hegemony is a process closely related to interpellation. In the
neo-Marxist context, Antonio Gramsci first used this term,
and it now appears frequently in contemporary critical dis-
course (Berger, 1995). Its original meaning referred to the
domination of one sovereign state by another. Applied to
culture and society, "hegemony" is the process of dominating
or controlling groups of people so that they unconsciously
assent to and participate in their own domination. Its victims
consider their situations to be the natural order of things.
Hegemony pervades the entire culture and social structure and
operates in the everyday lives of us all. It is far more amor-
phous, widespread, and embedded than interpellation. But both
are the instruments of cultural imperialism.

Cultural Imperialism
"Cultural imperialism" refers to the imposition of bourgeois
values, particularly those common in the contemporary U.S.,
on people who do not share them. The United States wages
cultural imperialism surreptitiously by exporting its popular
culture, including art, films, music, advertizing, styles of
clothing, fast food, and so forth. These colonizing com-
modities often masquerade as signs of progress, modernity, or
generous wealth sharing. One problem with cultural imperi-
alism is that the colonized cultures, typically fragile and lack-
ing the means of resistance, become distorted and dependent.

Ideology
The Marxist concept of ideology represents yet another point
that differentiates neo-Marxist critique from the earlier inter-
pretations of Marxist theory that culminated in totalitarian
50 Critical Art Pedagogy

forms of government like Stalinist Communism. Naive Marx-

ist thought concerned itself narrowly with economic relations
and their political consequences. The tenor of naive Marxism
was so circumscribed that it became Utopian in that it looked
for and depended on cataclysmic change in political structures
to achieve its vision for society. Neo-Marxist thought sees
culture and society as vastly more complex.
An ideology is a world view that, in general, operates
subconsciously to account for human experiences as they are
lived and perceived. Ideology helps people make sense of
events and conditions. It is a system of beliefs, postulates,
assumptions, and theories which concern how life is supposed
to operate.
As Berger (1995) observed, focused fundamentally on
what is, ideology tends to support the status quo, which in turn
fosters the interests of the dominant sectors of the socio-
economic hierarchy. Ideology is attached to every cultural
form, artifact and institution, including art, education and
mass media.
Marxism remains a keen instrument for mounting cri-
tiques of such social institutions as art and education because
of its original interest in the effects of inequality, an interest
that remains vital. In fact, inequality is perhaps more insidious
and difficult to identify and challenge today because of the
enormous technological changes that have transformed the
social landscape since Marx's time. Neo-Marxism provides a
reliable intellectual resource for challenging sources of in-
equality. Although Marxism failed as a political system, it re-
mains an important critical voice because inequity is inequity
regardless of the political system in which it occurs. The con-
tributions of neo-Marxism to critical theory and critical art
pedagogy include the questions its constructs, concepts, and
theories raise. Examinations of art pedagogy guided by neo-
Marxist principles promote revelations of oppression and
hegemonic relations that reflect similar patterns in other
sectors of society. Furthermore, neo-Marxist thought can in-
form our responses to these problems and help us find ways to
transcend them.
Critical Theory 51

Critical Theory, Art, Art Education, and Power

The critical interpretation of the history of art education,
explored in detail in Chapter Two, provides convincing
evidence that art and art education, like the rest of schooling,
can claim remarkable efficiency as agents of social reproduc-
tion. Like education, the art world itself is a complex social
institution that invites appropriation for purposes of estab-
lishing and maintaining power. We find an interesting example
of this function of art in antiquity.
In Rome, a few paces from the Flavian Amphitheater,
better known as the Colosseum, stands the Arch of Constan-
tine. Like the Colosseum itself, this arch is an ancient symbol
of Roman civilization. After witnessing the often bloody spec-
tacles in the Colosseum, fifty thousand citizens passed beneath
it. Many may have paused to gaze at the sculptural program
celebrating Constantine's victory over Maxentius and remind-
ing the citizens of their Emperor's absolute power throughout
the vast Roman Empire. The observations of art historians
about the arch's relief sculpture have relevance for our under-
standing of art and art education today. Gardner (1980), for
example, viewed the Arch of Constantine as a prime example
of the decline of aesthetic quality in later Roman civilization.
This criticism awakens us to an issue of long standing impor-
tance generally neglected in the study of art and art education:
the need to better understand the complex relationships be-
tween art, aesthetic value, and power. The determination of
aesthetic value contingent on the use of art as an instrument
of power remains an uncomfortable and neglected question in
the history of art and art education.
Rome's reputation rests more on engineering skill than
artistic accomplishments. In fact, Roman aqueducts and roads
are still in use today. But despite these engineering accomplish-
ments, Roman culture was once marked by artistic compe-
tence, though not by bright originality and transcendent
sublimity. B y the time of Constantine, this competence had
begun to decline. The Arch of Constantine rose between 312
A . D . and 315 A . D . , a quick job, given the limitations of
fourth century technology. Perhaps the Roman craftsmen
sacrificed aesthetic quality to the Emperor's demands for an
overnight monument to his power. In fact, a large portion of
52 Critical Art Pedagogy

the arch's relief sculpture was appropriated—physically re-

moved—from nearby monuments to earlier rulers, including
Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius. O f particular interest are the
medallions, or circular relief panels, originally carved to depict
the exploits of Hadrian, not Constantine. Moreover, as Janson
(1992) noted, other sculptural portraits of earlier emperors
were re-carved into images representing Constantine.
These earlier, cannibalized sculptures are widely regarded
to be aesthetically superior. Reflecting the prevailing view,
Janson (1991) described the parts of the arch that were carved
during Constantine's time as primitive and aesthetically defi-
cient expression. Beneath the medallions one finds a frieze
depicting Constantine addressing the Roman Senate, which
had become a powerless body under his absolute rule. The com-
position is simply a linear band of unarticulated figures with no
background. Missing in this band are the artistic conventions
found in earlier Roman sculpture universally regarded as aes-
thetically advanced. These include artistic techniques that
establish the illusion of spatial depth, the illusion of motion,
contrapposto, and other means for achieving accuracy of de-
tail in representations of the human figure, a valued artistic
goal at the time.
The Hadrianic medallions on the Arch of Constantine are
emblematic of the aesthetic decline of Roman art and archi-
tecture only in part because they are not authentic. Perhaps
the Romans considered their transfer from monuments
honoring earlier leaders an example of ingenious engineering
problem solving. To the modernist mind in the twentieth
century, however, it indicates a lack of artistic integrity, per-
haps even a felonious betrayal of the public trust by a corrupt
political leader contemptuous of earlier art works honoring his
predecessors. Imagine the Army Corps of Engineers being
ordered to disassemble the Lincoln Memorial and use parts of
it for the William Clinton presidential library. To the post-
modern mentality, however, an entirely different issue ap-
pears: the use of the arch and its relief program as an instru-
ment of power.
Aesthetic quality is, of course, a key element in the
experience of a work of art. But an awareness of how the
social, political, and cultural forces at the time and place that
Critical Theory 53

produced the art shaped aesthetic value can be equally impor-

tant.
The poor quality of the frieze depicting Constantine
addressing the senate was hardly accidental. Nor did it neces-
sarily reflect the pressure on gifted artists. Sculptors at work
on the relief for the arch had three years to complete their
tasks. Masterpieces have been accomplished in much less
time. Rather, one reason for the diminished quality of the
frieze is that aesthetic quality was simply a low priority. The
arch was not intended as an object of beauty but as a monu-
ment to the power and glory of Constantine, the absolute
monarch of the Roman Empire. Rather than providing the
experience of beauty or aesthetic enrichment in the lives of
the people, it stood as a tangible symbol of power, a tool to
impress upon them their subordination to the Emperor's
power. In the design of the Arch of Constantine, art became a
means to accomplish an end beyond itself—namely, a regu-
latory socio-political mission. This critical realization suggests
that to understand art better, we should broaden our focus
beyond aesthetic quality and aesthetic experience to include
the complex spheres of social, political, and cultural functions
art carries out in human experience.
The ancient juxtaposition of the recycled medallions and
the aesthetically inferior narrative frieze suggests insights with
a place in contemporary art education. For the Romans of the
day, any concerns about the sculpture's authenticity faded be-
fore the recognition that this art functioned to elicit awe in all
who saw it and to remind them of the stone-like presence of
the hierarchy of power. The power of the Emperor, far more
than a mere abstraction, became visibly manifest and em-
bodied psychologically in the social fabric of the everyday
lives of citizens as, like Constantine himself, they walked
through the triumphal arch. It is easy to imagine the Roman
citizenry gazing up at the Hadrianic medallions in something
like politico-aesthetic awe, their aesthetic experiences and
values being of their times. In this way, the appropriated art
reconstructed and extended the Emperor's power. The use of
art as an instrument of power redefined the meaning attached
to the physical art objects. The Arch of Constantine marks
neither the first nor the last instance of using art to embellish
54 Critical Art Pedagogy

established power and extend social control. But its story

serves as a reminder that the complex relationships among
power, art, and aesthetics in our daily lives and those of our
students should be addressed and incorporated into our under-
standing and practice of art pedagogy. The art and power
relationship issue lacks a long tradition in art history and art
education. It has emerged only recently, as the voice of the
critical theory school of philosophy gains credence as a source
of understanding. But note well that relationships of long
standing between art, aesthetic value, and power have op-
erated for centuries beneath our traditional understandings.
Critical art pedagogy works to illuminate these relationships
and to transform the ways in which art instruction tacitly col-
laborates in their continuing entrenchment. The critical goals
of this transformation center on how art instruction in the
schools can promote freedom.

Colonizing Student Art Worlds

Art is popularly viewed as a celebration of childhood, a won-
drous gift, a universal ritual form of neotenic human activity
that leads the child into crucial experiences of the world. And
it can be all these things. Some take this view another step,
however, romanticizing children's art to the extent that, ex-
cepting the case of those with so-called "talent," art becomes
solely the province of childhood. Art is such a vivid marker
for childhood that the strength of its symbolic association ef-
fectively diminishes its power as an adult concern. To para-
phrase Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, when childhood is
over, it is time to put away childish things. As popular college
art education textbooks (see, for example, Gaitskell, Hurwitz,
and Day, 1995) point out, students usually cease spontaneous
art production in late childhood or early adolescence. Needless
to say, this abandonment creates the very conditions that dis-
courage adult engagement in art. As the slogan of entropy
goes, "Use it or loose it."
Adolescents may lose their interest in art because of their
typical shift in focus to growing peer group and social
interests. But this speculation seems to ignore the reinforcing
effects of the esteem-building admiration and social recog-
nition that accomplishments in art invariably attract. One
Critical Theory 55

would expect instead that children would see art activity as a

means to achieve status and group affiliation and thus would
try to master art skills and visual concepts. On the other
hand, the centrality of the association of talent and art and
the special status granted those who possess it may be salient.
Those with talent have no need to be taught or to practice
their art skills; those without talent have no need to try be-
cause they will both fail and be embarrassed by their lack of
ability.
A second reason adolescents abandon spontaneous art-
making may be a perceived lack of ability as compared with
the high technical standards established by what they see as
adult or professional art—which is to say, the authorized,
approved, "high art" of the archive. Seeing Michelangelo's or
Ingres' representations of the human figure, certified by ex-
perts as prototypes of excellence, must be daunting to young
artists bedazzled by traditional art education's modernist form-
alism and fetishistic technical obsessions. (It is interesting and
paradoxical that the individual's critical judgment can stifle so
much art production.)
The critical perspective on art education accepts this
second explanation and extends it to theorize that the tradi-
tional school art program operates much the way adult-
imposed technical standards operate. Basically it severs the
connections with art which students form in their lifetime ex-
periences. Traditional art pedagogy supports the familiar
concept of culture as a hierarchy, with the upper strata as the
best and most correct. The art preferences and interpretations
of privileged groups reside at the top, and those of students
and other marginalized groups are at the bottom. Traditional
art pedagogy equates artistic taste with the preferences the
higher echelons express, and it inculcates these preferences as
perfected fact. Then it urges students to demonstrate "good
taste" by preferring authorized art and to develop "talent" for
producing facsimiles. Traditional art pedagogy tends to
present culture as a hierarchy with the cultures of elite groups,
including their art preferences and interpretations, at the top
and the student artworld at the bottom.
The concept of the "art world" springs from the insti-
tutional theories of aesthetics originated by George Dickie
56 Critical Art Pedagogy

(1974) and Arthur Danto (1981). Dickie's book Art and the
Aesthetic and Danto's The Transfiguration of the Common-
place, along with his many articles and essays, develop the
theoretical construct of the artworld. Institutional theory
describes the social transaction by which an object gains desig-
nation as art. A n object is art because of the context in which
it is encountered or presented. Dickie referred to the art world
as "the rich structure" which serves as the context for particu-
lar art objects. Danto called the artworld an "atmosphere of
artistic theory." A n artifact is accepted as art by the con-
sensus of two groups, the presentation group and the art world
public. Dickie resorted to theater for a metaphor: It takes
"both sides of the footlights," the players and the expectant
audience, to have a play. The presentation group includes the
artist, the maker of the artifact who intends it to be classified
as art. The artworld public includes persons such as art
historians, curators, gallery owners, critics, and others knowl-
edgeable about art.
Institutional theory stipulates that both parties be more or
less knowledgeable about and experienced with art, its theories
and history. Prior knowledge and experience provide the bases
for defining a newly encountered artifact as an art object. The
art world supplies an interaction between personal experience
and broad-based cultural determinants. It brings to its
appraisals the personal experience of culturally determined
foundations on which knowledge, attitude, and perceptions
about art are constructed. It supplies a paradigm, a predis-
position, and a set of precedents that enable one to recognize
and experience art—to make sense of an object as art.
Institutional theory conceives of art as an open concept,
a fuzzy set, or—in Wittgenstein's terminology, which we
discussed earlier—a family resemblance concept in which a set
or class or category is composed of members that may share
differing amounts of particular traits or characteristics. N o
one ingredient is essential for inclusion in that class, and
institutional theory does not require formalist, visual, or other
physically observable criteria to confer the status of art on an
object. Likewise, it stipulates no conditions before an observer
can feel a certain aesthetic emotion or some other internal
response. Institutional theory admits that formal properties
Critical Theory 57

or aesthetic experience exist; it simply avoids requiring that

these two aspects of the domain of art conform to any particu-
lar conditions before an object can become a member. Art is
art because of the ideas and concepts in its atmosphere of the-
ory. The artworld is, in Dickie's words, a "musee imaginaire"
In his 1974 essay, "What is art? A n Institutional
Analysis," Dickie observed that the institutional theory of art
may be simplistically misinterpreted, although for understand-
able reasons. Detractors may say that institutional theory ad-
vocates radical subjectivity in defining an object as art. Such a
definitional system means that anyone may say with perfect
confidence "This is a work of art because I think it is so." But,
using a religion metaphor, Dickie argued that the christening
has a long history of development as a ritual of particular
religious significance. Likewise, the act of conferring the
status of art on an object has a long and complex history and
a more or less structured set of intellectual prerequisites which
qualify such designations as at least informed and serious.
Like other types of meaning and value, human agency
constructs meaning and value in art, and happens to reflect
social interaction. Making a metaphor is a way to make
meaning and, in turn, a means of learning by making con-
nections between shared symbols. By nature, a metaphor is
polychotomous: One can use virtually anything in a given
context to stand for anything else and thereby convey or
transfer meaning, or to attempt to convey meaning subject to
validation by the conventions of engaged dialogue. In The
Merode Altarpiece, painted around 1425, the small boxes de-
picted in the right panel of the triptych baffled art historians
for years. The explanation finally emerged: They are fifteenth
century versions of mousetraps. The painter, the Master of
Flemalle, intended mousetraps to symbolize St. Augustine's dic-
tum that "the Cross of the Lord is the devil's mouse-
trap,"—that is, a means of fooling Satan (Janson, 1995).
Likewise, virtually anything can be designated as art. In
1943, Picasso fastened bicycle handlebars to a bicycle seat,
cast the whole affair in bronze, and titled it Bull's Head.
Picasso's piece demonstrated that an artist can invest so-
called real objects with recycled meaning and value as art
objects. Institutional theory underscores the importance of
58 Critical Art Pedagogy

the artist's intentions to this redefinition. The worker in the

bicycle factory did not intend to make art. Picasso did.
The Dada Movement became famous for reappropriating
objects as art. One of Marcel Duchamp's ready-mades was In
Advance of the Broken Arm, a piece consisting of a snow
shovel resting against a wall. With this piece, Duchamp not so
subtly challenged traditional notions of the function of art. It
was an ordinary tool redefined as art, which, according to main-
stream theory, should exist above the level of the utilitarian
object—art solely for art's sake. Interestingly enough, the
original 1915 piece has been lost, and one can imagine it
spontaneously reassigned its original status, perhaps by a custo-
dian on the morning of a heavy snowfall. In Advance of a
Broken Arm was re-created (purchased at a local hardware
store?) in 1945 and again rests safely against a wall of the
Yale University Art Gallery. One wonders whether the 1945
version is a copy or the original. One wonders, in fact, wheth-
er the 1915 version was original.
Institutional theory relocates the analysis of significance
in art and aesthetics from the mind and behavior of the indi-
vidual to the community of individuals engaged in social inter-
actions. It also relocates the art object from isolated indepen-
dence to the socio-cultural setting. These relocations suggest
some important implications for the foundations of a critical
art pedagogy with its strong ideological interest in theoretical
considerations of the person, the artist, the student and the
teacher acting as members of a community as opposed to
acting as isolated individuals abstracted from the influences of
social contexts.
Critical art pedagogy recognizes many art worlds. A s
students affiliate with plural subcultures, they inherit plural art
worlds. Their connections with subgroups mark and are
marked by the art and aesthetics of those subgroups. Art
suffuses all levels and dimensions of the culture. Critical art
pedagogy seeks to engage those many prior artistic and aes-
thetic experiences that constitute a student's art world.
Traditional school art curricula, and certainly the hidden
art curriculum, function to exclude student art worlds, or in
the blunt language of critical theory, subjugate or colonize the
student art world. From the critical perspective, student art
Critical Theory 59

worlds get discouraged—that is, colonized—in three ways. The

first way is through instrumentalism, the implicit or explicit
use of art instruction primarily as training for roles beneficial
to industry, manufacturing and other commercial institutions.
These roles include both that of the worker trained in design
and other art skills useful in production and that of consumer
educated (brainwashed) to prefer the products manufactured
for mass appeal based on received ideas of good or tasteful
design. The liberating ends of education receive a low priority
in systems of art education dedicated to economic instru-
mentalism. Such art instruction proceeds primarily to train
workers for jobs in industry after they graduate or otherwise
leave school and for creating and maintaining a market for
products by presenting specific taste preferences as socially
accepted. The critical question of who benefits most from
economic-instrumental art instruction is hardly difficult.
Those who own the factories that employ well-trained art stu-
dents have a clear idea of what they want schools to do. This
topic receives a thorough analysis in Chapter Two.
A second way that traditional art education subjugates stu-
dent art worlds is by reproducing the art of "high culture" by
glorifying certain art objects, authorizing what counts as pro-
per aesthetic experience, certifying certain interpretations of
art history, and by placing them all at the top of a resolutely
assured hierarchy of aesthetic value which devalues other art
objects and versions of art history. We call high culture art
"the archive," the visual counterpart of the predominant cul-
ture's literary "canon." Schools help preserve the archive by
presenting it as the true story, the ultimate interpretation of
art and art history. In return, the values implicit in the
archive help maintain the static structure of the dominant
culture.
In traditional arts pedagogy, schools reproduce an art
world of high culture. Art is authorized as art and vested with
aesthetic value to the extent that it coheres with the interests
—cultural, economic, and otherwise—of the dominant culture.
Art that appears inimical to the dominant culture is dismissed
as unworthy of serious attention. In special cases, non-archive
art may be permitted to occupy special status as semi-art.
These exceptions typically include the crafts, folk art, ethno-
60 Critical Art Pedagogy

graphic art, art of special populations, and art associated with

recreational or therapeutic contexts. In most cases, art
museums parallel the schools' determination to reproduce the
archive.
Critical art pedagogy has no plans to jettison the high art
of the archive, a valuable source of art experiences to in-
corporate into school art programs. Instead, critical art peda-
gogy recognizes the need to transform the educational process
that currently defines high art as an exclusive and privileged
domain accessible by only a few students. Critical art teachers
can reappropriate high art, liberate it from its abstract
exclusivity, and enliven it by incorporating it into the artistic
and aesthetic dimensions of the lived art world. The critical ob-
jection is that schools' traditional presentation of the archive
as the only art that counts excludes a wide range of art and
many versions of its meaning. Also, traditional art pedagogy
simply reinforces general conformity. Critical art pedagogy
formulates challenges to the exclusivity of the archive and the
authority of its univocal interpretations of art.
Because the schools have been so successful at cultural
reproduction, students and most adults typically question their
own aesthetic experiences and devalue their own abilities to
make aesthetic decisions. In short, traditional art pedagogy's
suppression of student art worlds is educationally unsound
even by its own standards. Some of its own most exalted educa-
tional theorists, including Rousseau and Dewey, have advo-
cated student-centered, active learning through instruction de-
signed to begin at the level of the student's lived experience.
A third means by which traditional art instruction mar-
ginalizes student art worlds is through its strict dedication to
an art pedagogy founded on the assumptions of modernism.
Though now a fading cultural paradigm, modernism has long
espoused the concepts of the independent art object and the
objective existence of aesthetic value inherent in the formal
properties (line, shape, color, and so forth) of the art object.
These premises hardened into unquestioned facts and produced
traditional art instruction practices that separate the artist and
the observer from the art. A critical art pedagogy seeks to con-
nect student art worlds and the contemporary art world as it
exists as a complex socio-cultural institution.
Critical Theory 61

A critical arts pedagogy would re-order the functions that

art instruction serves in the schools. Economic interests must
exert only a minor influence on the art curriculum and only
then to support critical instrumentalism, which is the use of
art instruction to achieve liberating ends and the promotion
of critical consciousness. Critical art pedagogy advocates a
rapprochement between the art world of high culture and the
student art world. Critical praxis in art education includes the
art of the dominant culture as well as other art forms con-
ceptually integrated as a non-hierarchical category of human
achievement with both commonalities and differences. Criti-
cal art pedagogy embraces postmodernism, and especially its
inclination to connect the art object to its context and its
denial of the myth of the independent art object. Critical art
pedagogy visualizes a re-alignment of these three forces that
now shape the schools' relations to student art worlds and the
consequent eclipse of traditional art education practices.

Critical Art Pedagogy: Propositions and Questions

To recapitulate, the emancipatory aims of critical education,
deliberately and unabashedly idealistic, require strategies that
include critique, the identification of hidden sources of oppres-
sion, the creation of a critical consciousness in schools, the
transformation of relations that reproduce problematic social
structures, and confrontations with injustice. Critical art
pedagogy accepts this aim and these strategies, but it is more
than just a microcosmic reprise of the critical pedagogy macro-
cosm. The application of critical pedagogy ideas to art and art
education provides glimpses through a new lens at how the
important institutions of art and education can be connected
to benefit individuals and social groups. Critical art pedagogy
can pose previously unasked questions and visualize possi-
bilities for the art world and for education in general that
might never come into focus otherwise. Still in its early stages
of development, critical arts pedagogy is discovering its own
voice and character. Further, the realization that critical educa-
tion expects improvement rather than perfection tempers its
idealism.
Critical art pedagogy asks that the practice of art instruc-
tion begin with these critical questions: What concepts and
62 Critical Art Pedagogy

values determine what counts as art in schools? Whose

interests do these determinants of value in art serve? Critical
arts pedagogy also asks how art instruction changes for
various groups, particularly those with identified gender, race
and class differences. What implications do these changes
have for these groups both during and after schooling? How do
aesthetic preferences, art knowledge, and artistic abilities
affect how the dominant culture labels these individuals? How
do concepts like beauty, talent and taste form? How do these
concepts become associated with power and privilege? How
can art education create a critical consciousness and promote
emancipation? The answers to these questions reveal the
nature of critical arts pedagogy. They are questions to ask in
practice, in the acts that comprise teaching and learning art in
our schools.
Chanter Two

A Critical History of Art Education:

Dangerous Memories and Critical
Consciousness

Introduction
As we saw in Chapter One, the heart and mind of critical
theory are the two principle foundations upon which art educa-
tors and students can build new understandings that will lead to
the creation of a critical arts pedagogy and its application in
their classrooms. The critical practice of art education will, in
turn, grant art educators and art students a more influential
voice in contemporary educational discourse. A third founda-
tion for art educators in the postmodern era is a critical
knowledge of art education's history. A critical history of art
education imbues art teachers, their students, and others
involved in the project of establishing art as critical praxis
with dangerous memories. A dangerous memory—recall that
Henry Giroux coined the expression—is the critical awareness
of the historical roots of a discipline, including all the implicit
and explicit influences that shaped current conditions. This
form of memory often establishes the rationale for a radical
re-conceptualization of education and a new visualization of
its possibilities for the future. Chapter One identified and
discussed three forms of student art-world colonization. Re-
sponses to these vectors of hegemony inform a critical ver-
sion of the history of art education.
To particularize the general thesis of critical historical
analysis, traditional art instruction occupies a place in the
school culture and curriculum commensurate with the extent
to which art instruction can help dominant groups achieve
various non-art educational outcomes. Further, the eco-
nomically and politically powerful groups inclined to co-opt
64 Critical Art Pedagogy

schooling for their benefit tend to control who gets to specify

these non-art educational outcomes.
The term "economic instrumentalism" aptly describes art
instruction co-opted for these purposes along with the forms
of art instruction that result. Dominant groups have mandated
conditions that compel schools to foreclose the possibility of
emancipatory education in art as well as in other subjects and
forms of knowledge. Non-art educational outcomes that
characteristically promote the interests of favored groups
tended to restrict further the members of marginalized groups.
Economic-instrumentalist art education defines art, aesthetics,
art criticism, and art history the way dominant groups define
them. The resultant archive, the official set of artistically
valued art objects and associated interpretations and petrified
meanings equivalent to the canon in literature, contains the
truths and the standards for good taste that comprise the in-
strumentalist art curriculum. The processes by which truth in
art history and value in aesthetics and criticism are con-
structed are far from independent of unequal power relations
that determine which students get what kind of art eduction.
Hardly isolated and unchanging, art and art education are
enmeshed in the social fabric and subject to the entire gamut
of socio-economic and political pressures. Through their
broadly pervasive presence in the culture, art and art instruc-
tion provide effective means of reproducing the various
asymmetries of the socio-political hierarchy and sustaining
the conditions of hegemony, particularly when used to pro-
mote non-art interests and as means to teach other subjects.
Moreover, the practices and concepts of art education
change in relation to changes in power-knowledge interests.
The aesthetic criteria for "good art" tend to reflect power
interests. "Good art education," it follows, also conforms to
these interests by training students to produce the approved
type or style of art. "Talented" students are those who seem
particularly capable of learning to produce art which conforms
to criteria established within a specific power relationship.
The alternative, critical praxis in art and art education,
leads to authentic art experiences that reveal how personally
constructed art worlds are created and how they function in
students' lives. Critical praxis has an emancipating effect by
A Critical History of Art Education 65

revealing unnoticed truths through creative expression, self-

reflection and cultural connections, and by providing the
motivation and means to resist oppressive forces.
Purposes extrinsic to critical praxis undermine authentic
art experience even though art exists in a social context.
Economic instrumentalism in art education reduces oppor-
tunities for authentic art-as-praxis experiences for all stu-
dents. The continuing absence of authenticity in school art
experiences, in turn, warrants a marginalization of art in the
curriculum. A cycle is established: Policies which restrict
access to art instruction and relegate marginalized groups to
vocationalized art instruction maintain the status quo of the
socio-economic hierarchy and effectively consign art educa-
tion to a minor role in the school curriculum. Art education is
then prevented from finding its critical voice. Thus, an under-
standing of the historical development of the economic-
instrumentalist cycle is one of the tools postmodern art
educators must use to formulate a critical art praxis and thus
break the cycle.
One theme in the critical interpretation of art education
history is an awareness that the concept of economic-instru-
mentalist art instruction, far more than the emancipation of
the individual that critical art pedagogy focuses on, influences
the place art education has in the curriculum, access to art
education, and the nature of art instruction. When art educa-
tion adopts the goal of providing all students authentic art
experiences through the means of a critical art pedagogy, art
instruction can begin to promote empowerment and emanci-
pation. That is to say, it can become "critically instrumental"
in revealing oppressive structures and promoting the means to
resist them. Furthermore, a critical arts pedagogy can co-exist
with discipline-based art education and other practices and
policy initiatives that comprise the contemporary art edu-
cation discourse.

Histories of Art Education

The few treatments we have of the history of art education
project the attitude that the basic facts are well-established
and uncontroversial. Most art education textbooks provide an
obligatory chapter or so with a chronological account of
66 Critical Art Pedagogy

events leading to the inclusion of art instruction in public

schools. A n early example was Elliot Eisner's Educating
Artistic Vision (1972), which contains references to such
primary source material as Benjamin Franklin's admonitions
to anchor schooling in the practical necessities. One currently
popular college text for elementary art methods courses,
Hurwitz and Day's Children and Their Art (1995), now in its
sixth edition, offers readers a long appendix of dates and
event descriptions. No explicit interpretations, discussions, or
issue identifications appear, the authors apparently consider-
ing them superfluous for students preparing to teach.
The few early accounts of the history of art education,
like early histories of general education, tend to praise and
recommend the subject on the assumption that curriculum turf
is at stake and the mission was to get more. The historical
task is simply to relate where and how the art education
establishment was more or less effective in this curriculum
struggle. The nature of art instruction and its many social,
economic, and political influences receive little attention in
the traditional histories. Nor does one find thoughtful analyses
of such issues as the recondite causes of the marginalization of
art in schools, the relationship between school art and the
larger contemporary art world, and other questions that those
currently concerned with art might pose.
Fortunately, in recent years the history of art education
has drawn more sophisticated scholarly attention. Examples
include Wygant's Art in American Schools in the Nineteenth
Century (1983), Soucy and Stankiewicz' Framing the Past:
Essays on Art Education (1990), and Wilson and Hoffa's
History of Art Education: Proceedings from the Penn State
Conference (1985). The most valuable history is Arthur
Efland's A History of Art Education: Intellectual and Social
Currents in Teaching the Visual Arts (1990). The critical
analysis of the history of art education that follows here relies
primarily on Efland's exceptionally detailed and perceptive
work. While Efland himself is not a critical theorist, his work
suggests that he is receptive to the critical perspective. He
writes that art is a school subject long associated with privilege
and exclusion and that we take our current art education
practices from models heavily influenced by the interests of
A Critical History of Art Education 67

dominant groups. Efland acknowledges, as well, the need for

remediation, and he calls for historical analyses of the philo-
sophical foundations of art education practices as reflections
of ideologies associated with the interests of dominant groups.
Finally, he recognizes the tendencies in these practices to
subordinate members of less powerful groups and seems willing
to challenge the control which dominant groups currently
exercise over school art curricula.
As Arthur Efland and others have noted, the major issue in
the history of art education is access to instruction. Critical
theory-based analysis adds a second major issue: the nature of
that instruction. With class, gender, and race among the fac-
tors determining access to art instruction, the kind of art
instruction particular students receive comes into question.
Drawing instruction, for example, can be the mechanical or
geometrical kind we associate with vocational training in
which all students produce identical products. Drawing instruc-
tion, on the other hand, can be oriented toward exploring
natural forms for individual creative expression, the kind we
traditionally associate with fine arts training. The latter
typically emphasizes engagement in the arts for intrinsic
u
purposes—that is to say, art for art's sake."
Efland's access issue and the accompanying issue of the
nature of instruction are highly interactive. Historically, pur-
poses other than the provision of art-as-praxis experiences
for all students determined the nature of art instruction. Dif-
ferent types of art instruction existed for different purposes
and were selectively available to different groups.
Critical theory asks who receives art instruction, but also
who gets what kind of instruction, who decides, who is favored
and who is not served. To understand critically the relation-
ship between access to art instruction and the nature of art
instruction, we must examine the implicit and explicit uses to
which the powerful and favored groups put art and art educa-
tion. Pursuing a critical interpretation of the history of art
education in this way awakens dangerous memory: identifying
structures that favor certain groups and exclude others is the
first step toward subverting these structures.
As the purposes of instruction changed to accommodate
the evolving interests of elite groups, concepts of the nature
68 Critical Art Pedagogy

of art and criteria for aesthetic and critical values changed ac-
cordingly. Thus, the interests of elite groups influenced the
curricular status of art instruction. Art and art instruction was
valued most highly when those in power could use it to
achieve socio-economic and political purposes congruent with
their interests. Consequently, social institutions and practices
evolved that provided control over the arts. These included
patronage systems, art education, and various forms of
outright censorship. Throughout the history of art and art
education, the effectiveness of each and the interrelationships
between them continually changed. What remained constant
was an oligarchic authority over these controls, and their un-
broken association with dominant groups or powerful indivi-
duals provides valuable insight for a critical history of art
education.

The Origins of Economic

Instrumentalism in Art Education
As it is with many other subjects, the early history of art
education is a history of ideas. Both Plato and Aristotle valued
(we would say devalued) art and art instruction as means to
extrinsic ends rather than for any intrinsic artistic or aesthetic
value like raising critical consciousness or furthering eman-
cipatory aspirations. Plato was particularly skeptical of art
because, as he saw it, art and truth were mutually exclusive.
With ironic tension, Plato approached the grand concept of
truth from the pedestrian subject of beds. He portrayed
Socrates inviting Glaucon, an unlettered servant boy, to help
illuminate the true nature of the artist. Plato proposed—and
Glaucon swiftly stipulated—the existence of three sorts of
beds. The highest form of bed is the conceptual one referenc-
ed by the word "bed" and occurring as an intangible mental
event rather than an objective physical reality. A second
order of bed is the physical object to be slept in. A third bed is
the image of a bed the painter makes (Cornford, 1941).
Socrates then induced Glaucon to admit that art, as a mere
representation of the highest form of bed, cannot attain the
status of universal truth. Socrates asks Glaucon to decide
whether a painting aims at reproducing any actual object as it
exists in three dimensions or whether the painter merely repre-
A Critical History of Art Education 69

sents the appearance of the actual object in two dimensions.

In other words, is a painting of a bed a representation of the
ultimate truth or a resemblance? Glaucon, upon whom no
logic went to waste, conceded that a painting of a bed is of a
semblance. Socrates and Glaucon concluded that, since it
involves representation, art is a long way from the ultimate
reality embodied by the conceptual level.
Further, art grasps only one aspect of the object, its
image. Socrates later added to this conclusion his insight that
since, by implication, works of art in general are removed
from the reality of the world of ideas, the faculty in human
nature which art touches is likewise far removed from wisdom
and truth. Thus, one of the origins of the marginalization of
art and art education is not only ancient but is also imbued
with a virtually irrefutable aura of authority bestowed by asso-
ciation with the philosophical heavyweight tag team of Plato
and Socrates, an altogether inauspicious beginning for art
education. Plato devalued art because he located its nature,
which he conceived of as imitation, far from the realm of
truth.
Plato chronicled Socrates' disputation to explicate one of
his reasons for excluding the arts and artists from his ideal
state and its institutions, particularly the institution of edu-
cation. His ideal state included a rigid socio-political hierarchy
with a few philosopher-kings ruling the many lesser citizens.
In this ideal state, education functioned as a means of social
control, not as the means to personal growth or pleasure.
In other words, Plato feared art. Another reason to
exclude the arts from his ideal state was their tendency to
excite the emotions, thereby distracting citizens from rational
social action. His overt hostility is evident in his description
of drama as arousing the emotional dimensions of human
nature, and he maintained that emotionality would subvert the
interests of society in his ideal state. Plato associated control
and subjugation of emotions with "The Good," believing that
emotional control advances human happiness (Cornford,
1941).
Critical art pedagogy acknowledges that Plato was correct:
art can be subversive. But Plato's recognition of these subver-
sive effects moved him to censorship. He would admit into his
70 Critical Art Pedagogy

ideal state only those artists and poets whose art glorified the
gods and celebrated the deeds of good men and heroes. For
Plato, then, the one type of art with value was the art that
helped maintain social control and sustain the power structure
by avoiding any emotional arousal and by celebrating those
who maintained the hierarchy and those few at its apex. Advo-
cates of the critical theory perspective argue that concepts
like "good men," "wisdom," "rational social action," do not
qualify as absolutes. Rather, the power elite construe them so
that they form the keystone of hegemony. These problematic
power relations were hardly unique to Plato's Republic. In
fact, they operate throughout the history of art and art
education as factors that promote its marginalization.
Plato realized that art functions as a social institution and
has deeply rooted interrelationships with other elements of
the social-political complex. It does not exist independently
on a rarefied plane remote from human experience. Thus, a
second important point in Plato's theory of art is that art is a
socially grounded phenomenon. Engaging in art, especially
through critical art pedagogy, can have consequences, out-
comes, effects, and implications for those outside the art
world. When viewed in this way, as a socio-political institu-
tion, art possesses the capacity to promote agency. It can be a
cause, an instrument, a determinant, a means of inciting
action toward emancipatory ends. Plato viewed this property
with suspicion. But contemporary art educators interested in
developing a critical arts pedagogy see the ability to promote
agency as a positive feature. The idea of agency through art is
an essential feature of critical instrumentalism and a key
function of critical art pedagogy.
Aristotle also saw in art a potential for social control. But
in the Poetics, the compilation of his aesthetic ideas written
between 347 and 342 B.C., Aristotle seems somewhat more
optimistic than Plato in his regard for art's potential in
human affairs. Aristotle's word "catharsis" refers to a psychic
power in tragic poetry to release negative emotional energy.
This emotional release benefitted the individual and, in turn,
society.
Aristotle's concept of leisure provides an early example
of the awareness that art and art education could be valued for
A Critical History of Art Education 71

reasons other than its practicality. Aristotle conceived of

leisure as neither work nor play, but instead as any pursuit
engaged in for its intrinsic value. He also believed that educa-
tion should include such pursuits.
Aristotle distinguished between the fine arts and the useful
arts and assigned greater educational value to the fine arts.
Throughout the history of art and art education, this distinc-
tion has served to institutionalize class differences in the
schools; to deny access to art instruction and authentic art
experiences to students belonging to marginalized groups; and
to delegitimize art as a school subject. Further, this polariza-
tion attributable to the conceptual separation of art from the
realm of practical utility divorced art from the daily lived
experience of all but the privileged few. In an 1884 essay on
Aristotle's aesthetic theory, S.H. Butcher first noted that
Aristotle differentiated fine art from useful art and then ob-
served that in Greek art, which served so many cultures
throughout history as the epitome of artistic perfection, the
similarities between the fine arts and the useful arts were more
noteworthy than their differences. In fact, vase painting was
among the art forms accorded the highest status in ancient
Greece. Predating contemporary critical interpretations by
nearly a century, Butcher recognized that an insistence upon
the distinction between fine and utilitarian art marked a subtle
significant point in the history of art and aesthetics. The
ancient distinction between beauty and usefulness (or, as we
might say, between art and craft) has remained a powerful con-
ceptual force throughout the history of art and art education.
It can be problematic in a number of ways, but chiefly as a ra-
tionale for economic instrumentalism, a theme we will revisit.

The Medieval Period

In the scriptoria of medieval monasteries, monks practiced
those visual arts which exemplify the economic instru-
mentalist model. The powers of art were co-opted by the
most powerful social institution of the era, the Church, and
manuscript illumination became instrumental in spreading
Christianity through the power of the written—and beautifully
embellished—word. Laboriously copied Bibles and other
religious works became the principle devices by which religion
72 Critical Art Pedagogy

achieved social control. In the process, the art object began to

take on an additional role, the role of commodity—especially
a commodity with the power to convey status. Literacy, of
course, remained rare among the populace in the medieval
period, the printing press centuries in the future. Generally
speaking, literacy was a specialized, "high-tech" skill learned
by a class of retainers called "scholars" who typically labored
in the service of the two important powers of the time, the
Church and secular rulers. As the roots of the word "manu-
script" indicate, books were copied by hand, and because of
the enormous amount of skilled labor necessary to produce
them, books were scarce. Accordingly, they assumed enor-
mous value. In the medieval period as in all other epochs,
knowledge bestowed power. Books contained knowledge, so
whoever possessed them possessed power.
Richly decorated books served as symbols of power, and
such elaborate, ornamental commodities conferred status on
their owners but not their producers. As Efland (1990) noted,
illumination artists were discouraged from taking any worldly
pride or aesthetic pleasure in their work, which suggests that
any individual expression or creative flourishes were also dis-
couraged. Illuminators seldom even signed their work, and the
titles we now use for many illuminated manuscripts come
from the location of the art work's discovery or the name of
the wealthy patron for whom the work was executed,
typically high church officials or secular rulers and their
closest associates and family members. The Gospel Book of
Charlemagne, circa 800 A . D . ; The Gospel Book of Otto III,
circa 1000 A.D.; and The Psalter of King Louis IX, circa 1260,
all exemplify this reference system. As you can see, the sys-
tem relegated the illumination artists to an anonymity suitable
for servants. They were workers in a fledgling art medium and
in a primitive economic system characterized by subservience
to those who controlled the economic means of production.
Art's function as a commodity, even one effective in sym-
bolizing and maintaining a privileged status, meant margin-
alization in this system. Further, art came to play an
increasingly important part in social reproduction. Its effec-
tiveness as a symbol that conferred status made it instrumen-
tal in both reflecting and reproducing unequal class structures.
A Critical History of Art Education 73

The art education system in the medieval period also re-

flected and reproduced unequal social class structure. The guilds
of the medieval period trained artist-artisans, and the training
was far from egalitarian. Young men (almost never young
women) were accepted only i f their fathers could afford the
fees. Further, boys with sparse resources were set to work
performing the more menial tasks in the atelier. They had
little or no hope of progressing to master status as did their
counterparts with greater means.

The Renaissance
The Renaissance brought intellectual and social changes that
engendered a new concept of the artist's role, and these
changes have significant implications for a critical analysis of
the history of art education. N o longer anonymous workmen,
Renaissance artists such as Michelangelo, Leonardo, and
Raphael, gained renown as individual geniuses possessed of spe-
cial skills and unique understandings. The new artists modeled
themselves after the humanist scholars of the day rather than
the workmen of the guilds. Albrecht Durer was such a new
artist. After visiting Italy in 1494 and 1495, he followed the
model of the artist as a humanist gentleman-scholar and em-
braced the concept of art as an intellectually engaged activity
belonging to the liberal arts (Janson, 1991). Humanists, of
course, considered the world and the place of human thought
and experience in it important sources of truth. Such humanist
scholars such as Ficino, whose patrons included members of
the Medici family, celebrated great artists as god-like geniuses
in their powers of creation and expression. This proposition
stood in stark contrast to the artist-as-craft-worker model of
the guild system and monasteries. Thus, artists became indi-
viduals permitted to design, execute, and sign their names to
works of art.
The recognition of an individual artist's involvement in
the composition of the artwork obviously changed—and en-
hanced—the artist's role. Another important change was an
acknowledgment of the role of the artist's passion or
creativity. Only the greatest artists could boast the quality of
terribilita, the capacity to feel sublime, divine emotion and
the forcefulness to channel it into artistic expression.
74 Critical Art Pedagogy

But the distinction between art and craft continued to find

expression in these new definitions of the artist. For Plato,
the artist deserved no special credit because he was just a medi-
um through which divine inspiration passed. The new artist
escaped the rigid guild system and its inequities and gained
entry into the patronage system by opening even more
distance between art and craft. Art came via mystical, divine-
like genius and miraculous ability. The implication for art
education seems clear: either you have this genius or you do
not. This neat dichotomy erases any need to try to teach
ordinary people to be geniuses. Renaissance changes in the
concept of the artist, therefore, failed to promote wider
access to art or art instruction. In fact, Renaissance ideas
about the nature of art and the artist further restricted it.
Likewise, from a critical theory perspective, changes in
art during the Renaissance further entrenched its use as an in-
strument for the promotion of the interests of the power elite
at the expense of marginalized groups. The patronage system
reinforced the tendency of art to reproduce the power
structure. The new artist worked for elite patrons and func-
tioned, at least in part, to produce art that flattered the
patron, whether an individual or an institution like the
Church. These patrons, exemplified by the famous Medici
family of Florence, discovered that among other things, art
could aggrandize their status and promote their interests. The
potential to promote the ends of patrons determined value in
art and, by association, defined talent and genius. Good art
exalted the patrons, enriched them, and added to their power.
The new concept of the artist remained vulnerable to the
misuses inherent in instrumental uses of art as a tool for
achieving economic ends.

Moral Instrumentalism
The critical perspective recognizes another significant ele-
ment implicit in the art world changes during the Renaissance.
Leone Battista Alberti's book, On Painting (1435) set forth
new criteria for art, and one of them stressed the association
between the artistic and intellectual domains. Alberti specified
that an artwork should have an istoria, a theme or story from
classical or theological literature. The acceptance of this pro-
A Critical History of Art Education 75

position meant that for admission to the archive of high art,

the is tori a presented would serve the interests of favored
groups. Through its istoria, art communicated religious, moral,
social or political messages. These messages, often described
as embodying and transmitting "high moral purpose," usually
coincided with and maintained the vested interests of the
power elite. Further, the concept of istoria set the stage for
the official prescription of a single, appropriate response to a
work of art and a stipulation of its authorized meaning.
Needless to say, this correct interpretation, itself often highly
selective, also served power interests.

Academies of Art
The new concepts of art and the role of the Renaissance artist
ultimately failed to foster an egalitarian art education,
especially in terms of access to instruction. The new concepts
also failed to advance art education toward authenticity,
engagement with art as a valued component of human ex-
perience, or the production of art works with aesthetic
properties associated with increased critical awareness and
emancipation.
In 1562, Georgio Vasari founded a Florentine academy of
art specifically to develop artists to take the places of the
great masters like Michelangelo, Leonardo and Raphael.
Vasari intended to train artists by having them imitate the
great masters in mechanical ways, and he devised then codified
a system of rules based on the art of the great Renaissance
masters (Efland, 1990). Another academy established by the
Caracci brothers in Bologna also featured rigid codes of art
instruction based on absolute rules drawn from undisputed
authorities. But these academies ultimately failed to advance
art and to train artists to produce art for their patrons. In
fact, "mannerism," a term reflecting Vasari's attempts to
teach his students to produce art "in the manner of. . . ,"
became a derogatory term for that group of sixteenth century
painters who sought to imitate Michelangelo and others. For
the most part, art historians and critics consider mannerist art
inferior to that of the high Renaissance. Those who take the
critical perspective when analyzing art education notice that
the aesthetic quality of art declines with its increased use as an
76 Critical Art Pedagogy

instrument to achieve non-art ends, a strand that began with

the Hadrianic medallions on the Arch of Constantine.
By the seventeenth century, the power elite throughout
Western Europe thoroughly understood the instrumental value
of learning in general and the arts in particular. Art depicting
political themes and the associated aesthetic codes served the
French monarchs much as art had earlier served the Popes.
Art historian E . H . Gombrich (1990) observed that the kings
and princes of Western Europe recognized and learned from
the effectiveness of the art which the Catholic Church
commissioned. That religious art had enthralled the people
and instilled and reinforced in them a belief system that
encouraged acceptance of, and support for, the Church's
power. In the secular version of this hegemonic process, art
associated mystery, might and myth with the persona of the
leader. Familiar examples abound in practically every Euro-
pean city in Europe, and they include in the U.S. our familiar
equestrian statues. Paintings of kings, generals, statesmen, and
even wealthy merchants portray their subjects astride surging
steeds, either heroically leading charges against unseen foes,
trampling lesser beings, or both at once. Usually the personage
appears larger than life both physically and metaphorically,
the artist having included conventions or symbols signifying
the approving presence of a powerful god or goddess. Such
paintings and statues supplied visual manifestations of leader-
ship qualities to inspire the confidence and instill the fear so
useful in autocratic or oligarchic social systems.
The most famous and most blatant example of the use of
art, or in this case, architecture, to aggrandize power is the
seventeenth century Palace of Versailles. The initial manager
of the building project was Charles LeBrun, the authoritarian
director of the French Academy of Art, and the actual work
proceeded under a succession of architects beginning with
Louis LeVau in 1655 and continuing to Jules Hardouin-
Mansart. The principal stylistic feature of Versailles is its
enormity: the palace building is over a quarter of a mile long.
In a critical context, the superhuman scale serves as a symbol
of the King's absolute power.
The architects situated Versailles in a vast park with three
main avenues converging on the main building. In fact, their
A Critical History of Art Education 77

axes intersect at the King's bedroom to symbolize his absolute

power over his domain in all directions. The vast formal
gardens surrounding the main building symbolize the power of
man over nature, and everyone knew who the man was. The
arches and Ionic columns on the second story of the garden
facade of the main palace refer to the classical order which
associates the power of the king with the classical traditions
of Greece and Rome, traditions that included erecting trium-
phal arches to glorify rulers. The King's artists and architects
certainly understood and exploited "the glory that was Greece
and the grandeur that was Rome."
Additional manifestations of the relationship between art
and power appeared elsewhere in France. A n academy similar
to Varsari's art school in Florence was established in Paris
around the time of Versailles' construction, its one and only
purpose being to train students to produce art that flattered
and promoted the interests of the royal court. It pursued its
mission by following a set of rigid rules that specified what was
acceptable and unacceptable art. The French Academy
became, in fact, the sole guide to appropriate art instruction
and art appreciation. Marshalling both patronage and censor-
ship, the Academy functioned to control art instruction, art
production, and their reception in society.
Charles LeBrun, the architect of Versailles, was an early
director of the French Academy, and he found in the work of
Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) a source for the rules he needed.
From a critical perspective, Poussin's work exemplifies how
the arts of the seventeenth century sustained the dominant
culture and, in particular, the celebrated "divine right" of the
monarchy. Poussin, a neo-classicist, believed that all good art
is carefully planned in accordance with good judgment based
on extensive knowledge. For Poussin, the two all-important
qualities in art were correctness and propriety, qualities one
could achieve only by conformity to a set of clearly defined,
invariant rules. But from the perspective of contemporary
critical theory, not only the correctness and propriety, but
also the rules themselves favored the elite. First among
Poussin's rules was the imperative of selecting great subjects
and grandiose stories of wars, gods, heroes, and kings. Classical
literature was an acceptable subject matter. But Poussin cau-
78 Critical Art Pedagogy

tioned against drawing subjects or scenes from the everyday

lives of common people.
Efland observed (1990) that artists trained in the French
Academy essentially became political propagandists assigned
to glorify the king and maintain his control over his subjects.
The expressive freedoms the Renaissance genius-artists en-
joyed were debased and then sacrificed in the state's instru-
mental use of art. The power of artists to conceive and create
yielded to a rigid set of rules for both making art and assessing
its value and acceptability.
Later, by the end of the eighteenth century, like the rulers
and political figures before them, wealthy merchants and
others with economic power seized upon the instrumental
utility of art to further their interests, and as they began to
value art skills as good for business, and therefore, for all of
society, art instruction gradually became accessible to broader
segments of the population. But as the doors opened, students
found a different type of art from the art sanctioned by the
academies.
The art instruction that complemented the changing
economic power interests of the nascent Industrial Revolution
reflected a conception of art quite different from the
Renaissance art the academies revered. The artists of the
Renaissance had been knowledgeable, heroic, creative geniuses
possessed of terribilita, and it had been useless to try to teach
common folk such rare qualities. But the art and art training
in the new trade and industrial order might encourage im-
proved product designs and influence consumer taste, which
should be understood as creating a mass desire for commodities
and products. Early observers construed these purposes as
evidence that art could improve society. The critical theory
perspective finds darker motives.
In the late eighteenth century, just before the dawn of the
Industrial Revolution, art skills were becoming acknowledged
as useful industrial skills, just as they had already earned regard
as useful domestic craft skills. In 1779, education authorities
reforming an art academy in The Hague specifically linked
drawing to industrial design. They considered that it was
necessary to teach drawing as the foundation of all art
mediums. In turn, drawing skill would lead to improved
A Critical History of Art Education 79

product designs and artfully decorated products that would

increase their demand and, thus, improve business and manu-
facturing profits.

Instrumental Art Education in

Nineteenth Century Britain
As you can see by now, throughout Europe from classical
times to the present, the economic instrumentalist rationale
for art education has long subjugated the student art world and
reduced the hopes for a critical art praxis. The pattern
appeared, as well, in Britain. In 1835, in the British House of
Commons, Member of Parliament William Ewart moved that
the House appoint a Select Committee to inquire into ways to
promote the arts in Great Britain. Ewart's motive was
commercial. He described the purpose of the Committee as an
inquiry aimed at finding the best ways to extend a knowledge
of art and design to the common people, especially those
employed in the manufacturing sector of the economy. He
also asked that the body inquire into the effectiveness of the
British Royal Academy of Art and the effects it produced
(Sproll, 1994). Clearly, Ewart wanted to make the arts more
responsive to the needs of society's economic and commer-
cial elements as identified and interpreted by members of
Parliament and their most influential constituents, England's
manufacturers and other businessmen.
The British political climate in 1835 carried considerable
nationalistic fervor. A resolutely imperialist nation, England
had only recently lost its important North American colonies,
losses accompanied by a diminished national self-confidence as
well as economic problems. Moreover, England faced increas-
ingly successful challenges to its former cultural and economic
dominance from competing European countries, especially
France. Meanwhile, Parliamentary speeches and debates
lamented that English artists were almost universally con-
sidered inferior. A member of the Royal Academy, architect
Charles Cockrell, testified to William Ewart's Committee that
art was strongly linked to the "honor and character of
England," and he went on to associate art and honor with
England's manufacturing ingenuity and prominence. But Cock-
rell noted that English manufacturers had long been content
80 Critical Art Pedagogy

to ignore art and design in their products. He referred to cur-

rent product designers as "inept dilettantes" who copied their
product designs from books. CockrelPs testimony compelled
attention because British exports had declined considerably in
recent years.
But Ewart's speech and Cockrell's remarks were hardly
the first instances in Britain of public and political interest in
the potential of art to enhance business. In 1832, Sir Robert
Peel recommended the establishment of a National Gallery of
Art to encourage the improvement of product design by edu-
cating the designers in art and by inculcating consumers with
good taste and the sense to desire the new product versions.
Peel's gallery would contain artworks not only to serve as
models for industrial designers but also to stimulate consumer-
ism through artistic appeal.
This elevation of consumer taste designed to increase
purchases of British products among the growing working class
—and thereby increase manufacturing profits—introduced a
new element to the overall economic instrumentalist rationale
for art. The accompanying appeals to national pride and the
martial language that characterized the appeals met enthusi-
astic, uncritical acceptance.
The creation of an official Royal Gallery soon led to a
second strategy for accomplishing Peel's objectives of im-
proving industrial design and elevating taste (to be read as
creating a mass market and increasing profits). This strategy
was the conscription of the British schools in the training of
students in art forms conducive to good business.
Toward this specific end, Parliament called 28 experts,
among them Gustave Waagen, Curator of the Royal Gallery in
Berlin. He testified that a major problem stifling British art
and industry was the lack of an educational system that
trained artists for industrial work, and he suggested that the
British adopt the German art education system model. The
German art education system made a clear distinction between
art and craft: The German Royal Academy in Berlin offered
instruction in Fine Arts, while students preparing for employ-
ment in industrial design and craft manufacturing studied at a
separate school, the Gwerb Institut.
A Critical History of Art Education 81

As we have seen, the art-craft duality generally reproduces

and institutionalizes class differences. Although historically,
both fine art and craft have been utilized as instruments of
political, religious and economic power, the art-craft dicho-
tomy always produced an unequal hierarchy of status. Since
the concept of artist-as-genius emerged in the Renaissance,
those who produce high art attain higher status than those
who produce utilitarian objects or design products for manu-
facture. The latter are considered mere workers, perhaps with
special skills, but still individually replaceable as producers of
commodities in an economy controlled by a much smaller
dominant group.
Like craftsmen, crafts too were devalued as everyday,
interchangeable utilitarian objects—mere commodities, and
familiar ones at that. By the early 1800s the British sensed
the loss of the aesthetic impulse in their everyday lives and
surroundings which in earlier times had led them to welcome
art all around them. Everyday utilitarian objects had once
been seen as worthy of artistic decoration. Even early tribes
living in the forests and moors and islands that became
England made no distinction between art and craft. They
infused their everyday lives with an aesthetic presence by pro-
ducing such utilitarian objects as metal cups and brooches with
rich ornamentation, celebrating their culture and using art to
relieve the hard work and tedium of day-to-day existence.
The distinction between art and craft rests precariously on
the proposition that fine art is valuable for its own sake—art
pour Vart—while craft occupies a lower plain because of its
utilitarian function. The critical view, of course, recognizes
that high art does in fact have a utilitarian function, although
this function is less readily apparent. One important, but
usually deeply embedded function of high art is the aggrandize-
ment of power and privilege, one of the oldest and most
permanent utilitarian features. Heroic equestrian statues of
mighty generals, sculptural valedictories of rulers, and archi-
tectural monuments are among the artistic conventions
contrived throughout the history of art to perform subtly but
effectively the useful task of glorifying the powerful.
In fact, long before the British and other Europeans
discovered art's power function, the ancient Egyptians per-
82 Critical Art Pedagogy

fected some of the more interesting artistic conventions for

distinguishing persons of high status. In the relief sculpture,
the Palette of King Narmer, circa 3000 B . C . , one central
figure, much larger than the others, appears to be slaying an
enemy in battle. This is King Narmer. The smaller figures of
his foot soldiers appear as undifferentiated units stacked end-
to-end. The significance of the larger scale of King Narmer,
still obvious today, five millennia later, clearly communicated
its meaning in its own time.
Egyptian artists used another artistic convention, more
subtle, yet every bit as efficient symbolically. A wall relief
depicts T i , an Egyptian architect of about 2400 B . C . , in a
boat observing a hippopotamus hunt. T i is not an active
hunter; he is, however, larger than the other figures. He is also
rendered as static, inert, perhaps incapable of motion, in
contrast to the rowers and hunters brandishing spears. Ti had
no need to perform the menial exertions of hunting. He had
only to speak, and underlings transformed his orders into ac-
tion. This wall relief, now ensconced in the high-art archive,
reveals artistic practices that celebrated TPs power and lofty
status. The critical point is that even in ancient Egypt high
art was more than just decorative or expressive and removed
from all utility. Art exists in a social context and serves a
function there. It can certainly show a pedestrian utilitarian
dimension, even though its function as an instrument of
power may be implicit rather than explicit.

Schools of Design
In 1836, the British Parliament agreed to appropriate funds to
establish the Normal School of Design, with William Dyce as
director. As Gustave Waagen had recommended, the school
followed the German system with its clear distinction between
art and craft. Parliament clearly intended for the arts to sup-
port business and industry, a priority that governed not only
who received instruction, but also whether that instruction
emphasized high art or the lowly crafts. Accordingly, the
Normal School of Design reproduced and sustained the social
stratifications that initially determinant sorted out students
suitable for each type of instruction. Art historians find no
indication that Parliament mentioned the educational and
A Critical History of Art Education 83

artistic benefits of either type of art instruction for the

individual student.
Dyce's school aimed to train workers for industry.
Students learned to make working models and patterns based
less on their perceptions of nature than on the variety of
industrial processes British factories used. Some controversy
and criticism attended the approach the Normal School of
Design adopted. A t least some members of the Select
Committee knew about the tenuous, problematic nature of a
system of art instruction rooted firmly in the economic instru-
mentalist rationale and its dichotomous concept of art-craft.
Perhaps they also knew about the potential for class-based
injustice in this system. The Select Committee's 1936 report
included the caveat that the proposed system of art instruc-
tion fostered mediocrity and might actually interfere with the
processes a student required to achieve an aesthetic under-
standing of the archive's masterpieces. The Committee argued
further that overly restrictive instructional practices in art
academies served to stifle the creativity and artistic freedom
necessary for progress in the art world {British Sessional
Papers, 1836. p viii. as quoted in Efland, 1991, pp. 57-58).
These words, although prescient, went unheeded. The
Normal School of Design under Dyce developed a curriculum
that de-emphasized figure drawing and focused almost exclu-
sively on training in product design. Its curriculum included a
conscious effort to differentiate the art of the Normal School
of Design from the art of the Royal Academy so as to make
design education accessible to working class students while
preserving the fine arts for the upper classes.
In fact, the concept of artist as industrial designer moved
to the forefront during the Industrial Revolution as the de-
skilled production of goods increased. The workshops of
skilled master craftsmen trained in the guilds gave way to the
factory where workers with brief training and few skills pro-
duced goods by linear processes reliant upon machines. The
familiar assembly-line concept illustrates this model nicely.
Industrial production increased dramatically in the nineteenth
century, but the aesthetic quality of goods lagged far behind.
Eventually, leaders recognized the problems this produc-
tivity-artistic quality trade-off caused. A s Efland (1990)
84 Critical Art Pedagogy

noted, the Crystal Palace Exposition of 1851 brought stun-

ning news to English manufacturing: its products were, indeed,
inferior to those of continental competitors. Industrial leaders
turned to education for solutions, and it fell to educator Henry
Cole to improve schools of art and design by orienting their
curricula more to commercial interests and less to fine arts. He
also received the authority to institute a drawing course in all
British primary schools to prepare students for more advanced
design instruction and industrial arts training. To train
teachers for this program, Cole established The South
Kensington School of Design.
Superficially, the historical fact of the establishment of
several schools of design suggests that art instruction in the
mid-nineteenth century became more accessible to a wider seg-
ment of the population. But the nature of the art instruction
provided complicates this apparent effect. The instruction
inclined toward mechanical drawing for the primary purposes
of industrial product design. It was, in short, art instruction
designed to produce workers skilled at new industrially and
commercially mandated tasks and to produce tasteful con-
sumers eager to purchase these goods rather than imports.
One could fairly say that the art admitted to the curriculum
was distorted by manufacturing interests so as to serve com-
mercial purposes instead of providing individual students its
educational value. The middle classes could have art in their
public schools so long as that art avoided the territory of fine
arts and so long as the upper classes gained direct economic
benefits from workers and consumers trained in craft and art
at public expense. In an era when the poorer and less powerful
classes had little worth beyond the labor they provided, the
expressive and creative promises in art instruction went
ignored in favor of technical, geometric, and representational
tasks. The effectiveness of this tacit practice of promoting
the interests of the elite while subordinating those of other
groups provide grounds for skepticism about the positive inter-
pretations of the industrial drawing movement.
A critical interpretation recognizes in this story of in-
dustrial drawing in British schools the institutionalization of
economic instrumentalism as the principal rationale for
working class art education. But the absence of authentic art
A Critical History of Art Education 85

experiences for the British design school students merely

reflected general school policy in Europe.

Economic Instrumentalist Art Instruction in the U.S.

As the era of absolute monarchs in Western Europe began to
pass and the Enlightenment, with its apotheosis of reason,
began to evolve, the function of art as an instrument of power
came into full flower. Art became even more closely associ-
ated with the power elite in many ways. Further, the nature of
art and art instruction—that is, either the fine arts or crafts
options—depended more insistently on class, race and gender.
Art remained excluded from the expressed concerns for
egalitarianism that dominated the intellectual discourses of the
Enlightenment.
A n example occurred in colonial America. Long before
they established a democracy, the inhabitants of the New
World established schools. In 1642, Massachusetts Bay Com-
pany authorities passed into law the requirement that towns
teach children to read so that they could understand scripture
and obey the law. As many critical historians have observed,
this provision for public education had as its primary purposes
social control and religious indoctrination. The place of the
arts in early American schools, though tenuous, also served
these purposes, along with the more explicit function of
supplying trained laborers. These provisions for schooling
included absolutely no references to the inherent value of
education.
As schooling became an institution in the colonies, the
place of art in the curriculum depended, as by now we might
expect, on the degree to which it could assume utilitarian func-
tions. Having been acculturated to the art-craft and beauty-
utility dichotomies, Benjamin Franklin wrote in 1749, that
ideal schooling might well include practical and useful subjects
as well as art. However, Franklin argued, the needs of the
colonies were so pressing that school time ought not be wasted
on "ornamental subjects." In Franklin's formulation, the
schoolmaster's worth exceeded the poet's and the value of the
inventor eclipsed that of the greatest artist (Eisner, 1976).
Benjamin Franklin's identification of art as ornamental
and therefore unessential led him to devalue art instruction in
86 Critical Art Pedagogy

favor of curriculum content he deemed more utilitarian.

Ironically, within the art-craft dichotomy, the greater value
accreted around craft. In our own colonial times, the worth of
schooling—and especially the curricular role art played and
the form its instruction took—was to be determined by eco-
nomic considerations in the world of work.
Franklin, our certified philosopher, had set the stage for
those who held more favorable views of art instruction and
recognized its ability to promote non-art economic ends.
Paradoxically, Franklin's devaluation of art instruction in
response to its lack of direct economic applicability initiated
the gradual development of an economic crisis in the early
nineteenth century in which U.S. industries marketed products
of inferior design and ornamentation. At that time, U.S. manu-
facturers realized, as their British counterparts had earlier,
that their products needed to be more "artistic" to compete
with imports.
A critical theory-based analysis of Franklin's instrumental
concept of art instruction, in particular drawing instruction,
reveals it to have been only superficially egalitarian, and as
such, out of phase with the ideological climate of his time.
Franklin wrote that such instruction would be as valuable for
the tradesman as for the gentleman, and he enumerated those
jobs in which drawing skills could be valuable: carpenter, ship-
builder, engraver, cabinetmaker, and others. Franklin also
noted that such skills might allow a workman to invent a new
product or a new way to perform a task and thus impress his
employer.
No one would dispute the practical value of drawing skill
as Franklin describes it. But he saw the student later applying
these drawing skills in labors no one at the time would have
categorized as art. Mechanical drawing skills were to art as
skill at typing on the qwerty keyboard is to literature. Further,
the skills Franklin advocated would hardly empower the
individual. Instead, they would consign him to a place near the
bottom of the economic ladder at a place far below the elite
employer. Art instruction, then, again played a role in
reconstructing problematic social conditions. Clearly, at this
juncture in the history of art education, differences in art
instruction's purposes have become associated with differ-
A Critical History of Art Education 87

ences in socio-economic class and the driving force in this

version of art education is the familiar, specious distinction
between fine art and craft that recreates the distinction be-
tween rich and poor in both the labor market and the schools.
Throughout the nineteenth century, numerous instances
arose to support the critical theory-based proposition that
when art and art education become instruments to further the
economic and political interests of the power elite, they repro-
duce the asymmetrical stratifications in society that oppress
marginalized groups. This inevitable result forms the historical
foundation of a critical art pedagogy that establishes authen-
tic, critical art experiences in the schools as a means of resis-
tance and a source of empowerment.

The Romantic Concept of the Artist

In the nineteenth century, the art-craft dichotomy helped
extend the economic instrumentalism of Franklin's time into
the Industrial Revolution. In a parallel development, con-
trasting concepts of the nature of the artist emerged, or more
accurately reemerged, to influence art education practices. On
one hand we find the concept of the artist as talented,
divinely-inspired genius. On the other, we find the artist as a
designer-craftsman whose skill at industrial product design
improved society by "elevating artistic taste" (read critically
as piquing the materialistic desire to possess") and bolstered
the economy by contributing product designs that increased
industry profits.
Meanwhile, the major cultural movement of the nine-
teenth century was Romanticism. With its emphasis on the
emotions and inner reality, Romanticism harkened back to
Renaissance sensibilities, and therefore, saw artists as pos-
sessed of special truths and insights that qualified them for
cultural leadership. The reemergence of this perception of the
artist had important implications for art education. As in the
Renaissance, authorities became reluctant to impose limits or
rules on creative genius. Nature, according to this view, should
be allowed to run her course. But instruction remained useless
for ordinary students—that is to say, those without the aura
of talent and, implicitly, students from working class
backgrounds. In 1857, British art educator and design
88 Critical Art Pedagogy

textbook author Richard Redgrave noticed these inequities in

his analysis of how art academies created and sustained class
differences. He reported that art students in academies adopt-
ed elitist, snobbish attitudes, and were disdainful of those who
were not studying art (Efland, 1990).
In due time, the Romantic model of the artist conflicted
with the rational and absolutist traditions of the academies,
and the criticism of their strict educational practices and rigid
aesthetic criteria for acceptable art centered on the issue of
creative freedom. This egalitarian concern for freedom did
not, however, extend to all students but merely to those who
could demonstrate talent. Those students judged to have
artistic talent could aspire to professional training in fine arts
academies. These students happened to be almost exclusively
male, upper class and, of course, white. The academies re-
mained the dominant force in the art world, and those
students who lacked the talent for producing art that met the
academies' standards adjourned to industrial art training. From
the critical perspective, we can say that definitions of talent
are as susceptible to class distinctions as definitions of artistic
value. We should ask, 'Talent for what kind of art?" and
"Who defines the kind of art instruction accessible for
different classes, genders and races?"
By the end of the nineteenth century, art instruction had
become more widely accessible, but the nature of the training
still differed according to socio-economic, gender and racial
groups, and the curricula of the two types of art instruction
differed substantially. In French schools of fine arts, students
received instruction in drawing that featured representation of
the human figure as the basis for art. Industrial arts students
spent their time on exercises composed of copying stereo-
typical geometric and ornamental renderings of such everyday
objects as teapots. These industrial drawing lessons included
little drawing from life, personal expression, critical and
aesthetic analysis, or involvement in the conceptual dimen-
sions of art production. Aside from job training benefits, we
find little regard for the humanistic, creative, conceptual and
spiritual benefits of art as a component of education. Schools,
then as now, were supposed to provide solutions to the
economic and social problems of an industrializing society. As
A Critical History of Art Education 89

education became the instrument intended, it replicated the

general socio-economic asymmetries. Art instruction, still
divided along old lines established between fine art and craft,
became a significant part of the separating process. The an-
cient bifurcation continued to coincide nicely with economic
and power interests.
From our contemporary critical perspective, we can see
both types of instruction failing to offer authentic, emancipa-
tory art experiences to all students, and the alignment of
artistic freedom with fine arts accounts for a large part of the
problem. Creative freedom and craft instruction enjoyed little
correlation as practiced in schools committed to furthering
the interests of those at the top of the economic hierarchy.
Creativity is antithetical to manufacturing processes, which
are invariably characterized by uniformity, de-skilled produc-
tion methods, and the attendant cheap labor.

The Industrial Drawing Movement

The two types of art instruction in the nineteenth century,
easily recognized and differentiated and divided by the art-
craft dichotomy, each institutionalized socio-economic class,
gender, and race distinctions. Our critical interpretation re-
veals ways in which both forms of art instruction served the
interests of dominant groups to the detriment of subordinated,
silenced voices. On the one hand, fine arts instruction remain-
ed for the most part driven by narrow definitions of art and
art instruction based on imitation of masterpieces sanctioned
by the authorized academies. Fine arts instruction sustained
the principle of artistic freedom on the basis of the Romantic
concept of talent and creative genius which had the unin-
tended, but nevertheless unfortunate, consequence of con-
tinuing the use of art and art instruction to perpetuate power
and class differences. Artistic freedom was, in short, only for
the talented few, with talent defined as an innate ability to
produce a type of art stylistically consistent with the archive
and therefore sanctioned by particular dominant groups.
Critical theory's concept of the art-power relationship
underscores the realization that the ultimate power is the
power to determine what constitutes official, authorized knowl-
edge. A subsidiary power is the power to designate individuals
90 Critical Art Pedagogy

as possessing talent or genius or "giftedness" according to the

degree that such individuals receive official, authorized knowl-
edge and unambiguously indicate a proclivity to act in accord-
ance with it. This power controlled access to instruction in
the nineteenth century and continues to do so today. These
attributes of talent and giftedness are hardly value-free, objec-
tively determined, absolute capacities. Instead, they are deter-
mined by individuals within a socio-political context. Art
instruction was unavailable to the ordinary student in public
schools. This student could receive instruction in industrial
drawing, the nineteenth century version of economic instru-
mentalist art education.
Industrial drawing instruction also served the interests of a
dominant group, but in more directly economic ways which
reproduced and maintained the hierarchy over which the
dominant group presided. To fulfill this function, industrial
drawing instruction focused on mechanical, geometric copying
exercises; substituted rules for freedom of expression; pro-
moted mastery of skills instead of talent; and as a criterion for
success, featured utility in improving industrial production and
increasing consumerism.

Art Education in U.S. Schools

in the Nineteenth Century
In U.S. schools, art education policy deliberately paralleled
European policies. Horace Mann, for example, advanced three
rationales for art instruction in the common schools: (1) to
improve handwriting skills, which were important to the com-
mon schools' goals of promoting literacy; (2) to provide
moral education; and (3) to inculcate a valuable industrial skill
(Efland, 1990).
The moral function of art education became more im-
portant in the U.S. than in Europe. As Spring (1976) pointed
out, the large numbers of immigrants posed potential prob-
lems for the dominant groups. Moral education, in critical
terms, meant indoctrination in values, attitudes, and ideas that
favored these groups. Further, it extended the process of hege-
mony by presenting these values as the obvious, common-
sense, and natural order of things. Reproduction theory
proved especially relevant to art instruction in the U . S . com-
A Critical History of Art Education 91

mon schools. At the time of the inception of art instruction

in common schools, the high value placed on drawing as an
industrial skill was translated into a set of aesthetic standards
for determining "good drawing." William Bentley Fowle's
1825 translation of a European drawing textbook differen-
tiated between the "fancy drawing" of privileged private
schools, which he detested, and systematic geometric ren-
dering that had more to do with reading schematic blueprints
for product plans than with values associated with the eman-
cipatory potential in the school art experiences.

The Massachusetts Drawing Act

The story of economic instrumentalism in art education chal-
lenges the myth that art is a fringe phenomenon operating
well out of the cultural mainstream and dabbled in by the
talented few, eccentrics, or the economic elite seeking refined
recreation. Instead, art instruction, especially as it occurred in
U.S. schools of the nineteenth century, became a socio-
economic instrument well recognized by the economic elite
who themselves dominated and actually defined the main-
stream culture. The Massachusetts Drawing Act of 1870
supports this proposition.
The final version of the act approved by the Massa-
chusetts legislature was entitled An Act Relating To Free
Instruction in Drawing (Bolin, in Soucy and Stankiewicz,
1990). The brief articles of the act included a statement of
general purpose and a statement of specific provisions for
achieving it: the act stated simply that "drawing be included
among the branches of learning which are. . . required to be
taught in the public schools." It further specified that towns
with more than 10,000 inhabitants provide "free instruction
in industrial or mechanical drawing to persons over fifteen
years of age. . . ." The act left the exact nature of such instruc-
tion to the school boards of each town. Bolin's research on
the series of events culminating in the act's passage supports a
critical analysis of its significance for art education. In the
mid-century, one of America's industrial goals was to foster
growth by minimizing our dependence on European industry,
especially the textile industry. Manufacturing interests sought
and won government support for tariffs on European textile
92 Critical Art Pedagogy

goods among other commodities. In 1869, industrialists

sought further governmental protection by petitioning for an
educational agenda that served their manufacturing needs, a
chief one being the need for skilled designers and draftsmen.
In other words, the industrialists sought to legislate curricular
content and instructional methodology as i f schools, like
tariffs, were to be exploited for their economic benefit.
Bolin's interpretation underscores the centrality of eco-
nomic benefit to the arguments for industrial drawing instruc-
tion in the schools. A Yale professor of the day, called to
testify before the legislature, deplored the lack of good
designers in the U.S. and interpreted the issue as patriotic: i f
the U.S. manufacturing sector only had skillful designers, it
could compete with European products, keeping U.S. dollars in
the U.S. He failed to mention that the major share of these
accumulating U.S. dollars would remain in the f.irm grasp of
the industrialists, rather than shared among the designers and
workers who produced the goods.
With the industrialists' petition in hand, the Massachu-
setts legislature formed a committee to consider the matter,
and presumably in accordance with the legislative process, to
seek as wide a base of support as possible for the proposals. It
invited testimonials to the value of drawing, and enthusiastic
testimonials appeared. Besides the needs of industrial de-
velopment, the cited benefits included improving neatness,
providing amusement, stimulating inventive faculties, and ele-
vating taste. During the year following the petition, 1869, the
legislature passed the act in a version substantially similar to
the one initially proposed. It increased the size of towns
required to provide drawing from 5,000 to 10,000 and
reassigned the responsibility for determining the precise
nature of the instruction—still termed, significantly, " i n -
dustrial or "mechanical drawing"—to the local school boards.
The interests of the manufacturers remained predominant
over any benefits students might gain from art instruction con-
ducive to educational growth. In 1871, British drawing teacher
Walter Smith was hired to design and establish for Massachu-
setts a system of art instruction similar to the English plan.
Controversy still surrounds the significance of the Massa-
chusetts Drawing Act. The critical theory view is that the act
A Critical History of Art Education 93

benefitted the economic interests of the few rather than the

cultural and educational interests of the many. Without doubt,
desire for industrial development provided impetus for the bill.
However, Bolin (1990) maintains that this view is too narrow
and that the Massachusetts Drawing Act was actually a demo-
cratic maneuver rather than a legalized commandeering of the
schools for the benefit of an exclusive group bent on subordi-
nating other groups by mandating a type of education that
prepared them only for entry-level labor. He adduced the
testimony before the legislative committee and the com-
promise process that ensued as evidence that the act drew
support from a much broader constituency than the factory
owners who first made the proposal.
But Bolin's interpretation remains unconvincing for three
reasons. First, none of the rationales before the committee
were at variance with the economic interests of the industria-
lists. In fact, beyond those cited earlier, the projected benefits
included improving the moral character of the masses (always
a control-oriented argument) and the applicability of drawing
to the study of geometry, penmanship, arithmetic, and other
subjects. Second, the fact that several rationales for industrial
drawing appeared hardly undermines the predominant interests
of the industrialists. Third, those persons who presented testi-
mony to the drawing committee were primarily educators, and
it is more convincing to conclude that their rationales for
industrial drawing fleshed out the manufacturers' proposal and
grounded it in the broader context of education. A critical
interpretation is that the educator's testimony functioned as
the expert "stamp of approval" that reinforced and legiti-
mated the industrialists' interests.
Bolin also pointed to compromises in the bill as evidence
for his interpretation, but nothing in the bill's final version
interferes at all with the economic interests of the manufac-
turers. The increased population provision of the compromise
bill appears to have been more an accommodation to the
financial limitations of the smaller towns and their schools
than a desire to protect democracy by limiting undue influence
of the economic elite on local school programs. Smaller towns
would have been hard pressed to fund drawing teachers. More-
over, Massachusetts factories were located in large towns, not
94 Critical Art Pedagogy

small ones. The population size compromise, then, may actu-

ally have benefitted the industrialists even further by concen-
trating drawing students closer to their plants.
One could, of course, offer arguments against a critical
interpretation. Certainly potential benefits and advantages
existed for a student who improved his drawing skills (few
women were affected). Students would indeed learn skills that
would qualify them for jobs. Furthermore, the jobs would
require the type of skilled labor especially attractive for stu-
dents from the lower income groups. In an ideal world, such
economically based educational reform might produce social
mobility. But in the real world, it usually benefits only a few.
In the case of the Massachusetts Industrial Drawing Act, the
socio-economic mobility that schooling promised proved to
be more stick than carrot. The social mobility argument
which Bolin—and others willing to turn historiography into
celebration—adopt is refuted by the fact that in the 1870's
most students—and particularly those from lower income
levels—left school before age 15, which was the minimum age
the act stipulated for free industrial drawing instruction. The
actual group of students likely to benefit was, therefore, small:
Few students aged 15 and older in towns with populations over
10,000 actually attended high schools, let alone sought out
drawing instruction.
Questions also remain about whether the act was widely en-
forced and achieved any benefits for students. Henry Turner
Bailey, the state agent for drawing in Massachusetts, wrote in
an official report that in 1888, of the 351 eligible schools in
Massachusetts, only 181 had drawing instruction of any kind,
and only 40 of these 181 schools had trained drawing teachers
(Wygant, 1983). Despite the act's stated intentions, it result-
ed in mechanical drawing instruction for only a small group of
students destined to work for the financial benefit of an even
smaller group, the economic elite of the industrial sector. In
this famous early instance then, the Massachusetts art pro-
gram failed to educate any appreciable number of students in
art as art was understood in the late nineteenth century. The
primary purpose of the program was to supply workers trained
at public expense to increase production and profits for a
select group; any economic benefits accruing to the students
A Critical History of Art Education 95

or to society were secondary. This hierarchy of interests

shaped the way the Massachusetts drawing program worked
and the ways the students there learned art. Bolin's characteri-
zation of the Massachusetts Drawing Act as a "democratic
maneuver" is half right: It assuredly was a maneuver, but it was
hardly democratic. A more accurate characterization would be
"capitalist maneuver." Many Americans confuse the words
"democratic" and "capitalist."
From the critical perspective, reproduction theory de-
scribes the uses of institutions like the public schools to repli-
cate society's asymmetrical hierarchies. Training students in
industrially useful skills assures them job opportunities, but
they remain workers in a fixed hierarchy that indulges those
on higher levels and silences those on lower ones. The Massa-
chusetts Drawing Act supplies another instance in the history
of art education where art instruction carried out the reproduc-
tion process. The act illustrates the proposition that instru-
mental art education helped the school program reproduce and
maintain the asymmetrical hierarchies of power. In so doing,
it undermined the opportunities for individuals to find au-
thentic art experiences in their schools.

A New Rationale for Art Instruction

By the turn of the century, we find economic instrumentalism
no longer cited explicitly as a raison d'etre for art instruction.
In fact, in the educational discourse of the late 1800s, it began
to draw skepticism and some actual critics. In 1881, a Boston
newspaper excoriated the drawing program's practice of
separating college-bound students from those intended to be
workers and tradesmen. The newspaper saw this practice, now
called "tracking," as amounting to an un-American fore-
closure of opportunity. The editorial invoked the meritocratic
idea that anyone with the ambition and talent can succeed.
Outside intervention in the schooling process, by contrast,
interrupts the natural process of upward mobility and merit-
based selection—that is, the American Way to success—by
providing access to one group while denying it to another.
We find more than a little irony in the reversal of
rationales for art instruction since the 1870's. Then, art—or
at least one version of art—was thought to be a skill likely to
96 Critical Art Pedagogy

get one a job. Today, art—at least our latest version of it—is
often considered a frill of little use in accomplishing what
many consider the mission of schooling—that is, educating
students to get jobs. This is, of course, the so-called common-
sense (or pragmatic) view of schooling's purpose that unravels
under the scrutiny of critical consciousness. The question of
whose interests actually take priority when education ascribes
to the job relevance rationale has a disquieting answer.
Although economic instrumentalism began to loose status
as the predominant rationale for art in the schools, its effects
remain deeply embedded in practice. As scholars like Spring,
Bowles, and Gintis have shown, the use of all subjects in
schooling, art included, for economic and political purposes
quite removed from the goal of the education of the individual
is an entrenched structural reality today.

Moral Instrumentalism in U.S. Art Education

As we saw earlier, following the 1870 Massachusetts Drawing
Act, education officials imported Walter Smith from England
to administer the mandated art program. It is not without
irony that a British subject undertook to direct an educational
program intended to diminish American economic dependence
on European designers and goods. But England was, after all, a
pioneer in the use of art education as an instrument of eco-
nomic policy, and in this sense at least, British colonization
continued more than a century after the Revolutionary War.
England also pioneered another form of instrumentalism
that influenced art education: moral and cultural instrumental-
ism. John Ruskin, an esteemed critic and the first professor of
Fine Arts at Oxford, sharply rejected the use of art education
as an economic instrument and believed it should serve as a
"branch of manufacturing" (Efland, 1990). He later described
the English system of teaching art as industrial design as a
"falsehood." At the heart of Ruskin's rejection of economic
instrumentalism lay his belief that art had a spiritual mission
to praise the beauty of God's creations—namely, Nature.
When art accomplished this, it would embody a high moral
purpose that transcended mere industrial product design.
Imitation of nature became, therefore, the means by which art
A Critical History of Art Education 97

attained its high moral purpose. In this moral edification,

Ruskin saw an invaluable social benefit.
While applauding Ruskin's rejection of economic instru-
mentalism, critical theorists recognize several difficulties with
his assumptions. To start with, when he ascribed a spiritual
function to art, he promulgated the doctrines of mainstream
Protestantism and its exclusion of other forms of spirituality.
Second, his view that art should imitate God's creations
required the belief that form is independent from art. Ruskin
believed that art is based upon laws in nature, which derived its
authority, in turn, from God. In other words, Ruskin's belief
represented a variant of naive formalism, an aesthetic stance
antithetical to a critical art pedagogy that would provide
emancipatory art experiences to all students as part of general
education. Formalism separates the artist from the art.
A third difficulty with Ruskin's views centers on his
inclination to define "high moral purpose" in ways commen-
surate with England's nationalistic interests. His "high moral
purpose" institutionalized power and status asymmetries
within English society as well. For example, in a lecture at
Oxford, Ruskin identified art's spiritual purpose of revealing
the beauty of God's creations with England's imperialist
socio-political ambitions. He called for England to return to
its colonial power along with its former beauty (Efland, 1990).
Further, Ruskin advised that artists abandon what we might
regard now as socially marginalized subjects. His biographer
Edward Cook (1890) quoted him as saying that artists should
depict a gentleman in preference to a laborer or an angel
rather than a dancing girl (Efland, 1990). Although to his
credit, Ruskin urged art eduction to avoid economic instru-
mentalism, the alternatives he advocated failed to establish art
education as a means for providing all students with em-
powering, authentic art experiences and imposed upon it
instrumental constraints of another sort.
Like the earlier economic instrumentalism, moral instru-
mentalism migrated to America to influence school art
programs. William Torrey Harris, U.S. Commissioner of Edu-
cation from 1889 to 1906, believed that through its embodi-
ment of beauty, art could join religion and philosophy to
impart experiences of divine truth. Harris saw history as the
98 Critical Art Pedagogy

continuing development of morality, its current state reflected

by art. Art education, therefore, could expose students to high
moral principles. Harris construed art education's ability to
convey high moral principles to mean imbuing students with
respect for precisely those institutions that effect social and
individual control. In other words, he was interested in art
instruction that promoted conformity, conservatism and the
status quo (Efland, 1990).
Critical analysis here focuses less on opposing art educa-
tion as a means of social control and more on the task of
uncovering sources of bias in the "high moral principles" such
an education conveys. The questions of who selects the high
moral principles, in whose interests they operate, and against
whose interests they operate are central. High moral
principles can institutionalize the power and status of certain
groups while marginalizing such other groups as women, non-
Western ethnic groups, the poor, and students themselves.
As the twentieth century began, the moral instru-
mentalism propelling art education manifested itself in U.S.
schools as the Picture Study Movement. By the late 1800s,
advanced printing techniques made high quality art reproduc-
tions widely available, and teachers used them in art appre-
ciation lessons aimed at instilling the high moral principles
and spiritual values to be found in great works of art. By
design, most of these values and principles were uniquely
American and were thus especially beneficial for Ameri-
canizing the many children of immigrants (Stankiewicz,
1984). Analysis from the critical perspective finds that such
art instruction presents marginalized students with only the
values of the dominant culture. The socio-political and eco-
nomic interests of the dominant culture also defined the
aesthetic values and critical standards for selecting "good" art.

Arthur Wesley Dow and Design

To the mix of competing views on the foundations of art
education in the late nineteenth century created by economic
and moral instrumentalism came the belief that one could
discover orderly laws of art like scientific laws of nature.
Furthermore, these laws could serve as a foundation for art
instruction. One example that seems preposterous to con-
A Critical History of Art Education 99

temporary eyes is the oversized volume by R.W. Gardner

entitled A Primer of Proportion in the Arts of Form and Music
(1945). A n admired professor in the School of Fine Arts at
the University of Pennsylvania, Gardner propounded a theory
that Euclidean laws of area and scale should be the basis for
design in music, architecture, city planning, gardening, arts
and crafts, painting, sculpture, and all the "arts of form."
Gardner had published an earlier study in 1925, "The
Parthenon: Its Science of Forms," that sought to quantify and
systematize the Greeks' design principles into law-like state-
ments.
Gardner's comparatively late book-length compendium of
artistic assurances reflects his faith in positivism, the domi-
nant academic and social philosophy in the U.S. at the time.
Positivists expressed confidence in science as the most reliable
form of knowledge, and it began to infuse all forms of edu-
cational philosophy and practice, art instruction included. The
earlier work of Arthur Wesley Dow (1857-1922) inspired the
application of positivism to art instruction.
Dow developed a systematic theory which described an art
object as a structure of elements composed according to a
finite set of principles. He then shaped his theory to function
as a readily accessible, uniform instructional method. Dow
studied art in France with the painter Jean Francois Millet. But
on his return to the U.S., he rejected the approach to art and
art education he had learned abroad as too academic and too
reliant on geometric copying. He then studied with Edward
Fenollosa, the curator of Japanese prints at the Boston
Museum of Fine Arts. From this experience, he produced the
theory of design and developed the model of elements and
principles of design still in use. Originally, Dow divided the
formal properties of a painting, drawing, print—any two
dimensional graphic work—into three design elements: line,
notan, and color.
The most basic and important of the three elements, line,
referred to the edges of shapes and the relationships between
them in pictorial space. Dow derived the second element,
notan, directly from his study of Japanese prints in Boston.
"Notan" means "light-dark" in Japanese. In Dow's system, it
refers to the creation of mass or three-dimensionality by
100 Critical Art Pedagogy

juxtaposing varying shades of light and dark. In this regard, it

is similar to chiaroscuro. The final element, color, refers to
chroma and hue, and also to the quality of light in an artwork.
Dow theorized that these three elements represented the
building blocks of all art and that one could analyze an art
work in terms of these three essential parts. Further, artists
combined or manipulated the elements according to five
principles of composition: symmetry, repetition, opposition,
transition and subordination.
In 1899, Dow published Composition, a text for teaching
art according to his system of three elements and five prin-
ciples. His text went through a number of revisions and
printings and became the standard school art text in the U.S.
in the first half of the twentieth century. Dow's system be-
came widespread not only because of its reductionistic,
analytic teachability, but also because Dow was director of the
art education program at Columbia's enormously influential
Teachers' College, where John Dewey also taught. Dow's
students adopted and promoted his system of design, then
went on to become teachers themselves.
Some art historians (Moffat, 1977; Stankiewicz, 1990)
have interpreted Dow's system as an attempt to transform art
instruction from the mechanical copying of geometric forms
and models that characterized earlier instrumentalist-based art
education practices into art learning experiences that
revitalize the student's imagination, personality and spirit.
But from the critical perspective, this interpretation over-
states the case.
Dow himself seemed to express a general awareness that
earlier forms of art instruction were problematic because they
de-skilled the art process. In his introduction to the 1913
edition, he criticized art education's past reliance on imitation
of nature and historic styles. He proposed replacing imitation
with a created awareness in the student of the structure of art.
He wrote that good art results from educated skills and
judgment, not from copying exercises that reduced art to mere
technique. Although this statement appears to reconfigure art
instruction so as to encourage the individual student to include
such faculties as judgment and spontaneity, copying models of
ornament and other artworks remained the primary instruc-
A Critical History of Art Education 101

tional modality in Dow's system. The second lesson in

Composition is an exercise in line drawing where students must
begin drawing straight lines, emphasizing "straightness of
direction." Next, the lesson directed students to draw curves
and irregular lines. Dow also required students to copy
Japanese brush drawings to gain skills he called "hand control"
and "quality of touch." A later lesson instructs students to
copy the illustrated patterns and examples without measuring
them.
With this system, Dow took one step away from the
blatantly mechanical and geometric copying of earlier forms
of instrumentalist art instruction. But Dow's Composition
retained an essentialist, dogmatic notion of "good art" and
prescribed a limited range of abilities and skills for producing
it. Dow's synthetic system encouraged individuality to a
degree. By achieving mastery, the students apparently reached
an advanced status where they could systematically manipu-
late the elements and principles to attain harmony, Dow's
sine qua non of art.
In practice, however, design theory amounted to just
another case of the systematic reduction of art to a set of
vocational skills that invited exploitation of school art for
economic purposes benefiting a few instead of playing an
important part in the education of all. Defining art remained
an act of legitimation following a set of rules selected and
established from within a power-knowledge structure that
inherently included certain interests and excluded others. The
individual student and student art worlds remained outside the
process that created the criteria to determine artistic value
and skill in design theory.
Unfortunately, Dow's system is reductionistic and fosters
a de-skilled concept of art and art teaching that removes the
human dimension and nullifies student art worlds. It established
a set of rules for determining the value of those student experi-
ences that arise or exist apart from the learning context.
Dow's system, like earlier practices, separated the knower
from the known, or in this case, the artist from the art.
Another critical concern centers on the potential for
misuse inherent in design theory's tendency to assume
authority over the content of art and art instruction. A n
102 Critical Art Pedagogy

over-emphasis on design as art leads to the objectification of

art and its presentation as a totally rational process consisting
of a sequences of programmed steps. This tendency in design
theory nicely augments the economic instrumentalist ration-
ale and subsequent configuration of art instruction as a form of
vocational or industrial training. Introducing art as a sequence
of steps toward mastery of a finite set of elements and prin-
ciples of design easily transmitted to student-units from any
competent teacher, ultimately pushes art to the margins of
the curriculum and keeps it there.
Design theory also offered implicit support for modern-
ism's formalist aesthetics and for mimesis, subtle but powerful
doctrines that colonize student art worlds. Formalism's devo-
tion to abstract forms existing apart from the art object itself
obscures student experience and establishes a chasm between
the experience of the art object and the person perceiving or
valuing it.
Design theory implicitly helped to tighten the bonds
between school art and a power establishment seeking always
to co-opt the schools for economic instead of educational
ends. Design became art. The skeleton became the whole
organism. The menu became the dinner. Once again, the
theorists squandered art's potential in education.

Additional Problems in U.S. Art Education

We know too well that in nineteenth century America,
women received little schooling. Consequently, the art instruc-
tion available to them necessarily differed from the geometric
industrial design fabricated by economic instrumentalism. But
women's art education was influenced by instrumentalism of a
different sort. Many in the nineteenth century believed
women incapable of many skills, among them producing
artworks for the high art archive of mainstream culture. The
daughters of the wealthy accepted art instruction mainly as a
social refinement to prepare them for marriage.
Moreover, analyses of art education developments from
the critical perspective found in the Child Study Movement of
the turn of the century a source of bias against children's art.
A s a central philosophical feature of this movement, G .
Stanley Hall applied biological principles to formulate the
A Critical History of Art Education 103

theory often sloganized as "ontogeny recapitulates phylo-

geny." This theory asserts that each human develops in the
same way in which the human species has evolved—that is,
from primitive ignorance to civility and understanding. Art
educators interpreted this theory to mean that child art was
primitive and meaningless pre-art that should be supplanted as
soon as possible by art that conforms to adult standards or at
least to adult versions of the cultural canon. Gaitskell, Hur-
witz, and Day (1992) cited the imposition of adult art
standards on children as a teaching practice with negative edu-
cational consequences and as one of the reasons children lose
interest in art.

Conclusion
Teachers, students, artists, scholars, and others concerned
with the institution of art instruction in our contemporary
culture can create the time and space for change by reflecting
on the history of art education, particularly a history pre-
sented from the critical theory perspective. A history that
looks beyond the celebration of the colonizing functions of
power becomes a dangerous memory and sets the stage for an
art education praxis that transcends the dichotomy between
theory and practice characterizing an art education con-
scripted into the service of economic or power interests.
Dangerous memories are awakened in particular places and
times, not by official accounts published, certified, then
shelved in libraries. A critical art education praxis—a critical
art pedagogy—begins with the evocation of dangerous
memories among individuals in actual living contexts.
The dangerous memory and critical consciousness are
essential foundations of critical art pedagogy. Teachers,
students, and others involved in establishing a critical art
pedagogy can access both by incorporating into their practice
some knowledge of the critical history of art education.
Critical art pedagogy does not seek to replace economic instru-
mentalism and moral instrumentalism with a case-hardened
new official model for practice. Nor does it seek to isolate
itself from social, political, and historical processes. Instead, it
seeks to evoke a sense of "critical instrumentalism" and
encourage the subversion of oppressive models of practice.
Chanter Three

Describing the Individual Art Student:

Psychologies for Critical Art Pedagogy

Educators traditionally expect psychology to supply descrip-

tions of the mental characteristics of their learners so as to
improve instruction and learning. For example, faculty
psychology and behaviorism are two early forms of psychol-
ogy educators relied upon. But as usual with unquestioned
allegiances, they found themselves limited by rigors and restric-
tions. Critical educators believe that while applicable to, and
useful in, the physical sciences, the scientific method has been
generally misapplied in the social sciences and, further, tradi-
tional "scientific psychology" has had little positive influence
on either education or the social sciences.
The problem with how psychology might help build the
theoretical base for critical art pedagogy centers on the
tendency for the psychologies of the past to position them-
selves as "meta-narrative," or final, total explanations. The
postmodern mind is, by definition, suspicious of the meta-
narrative because it abridges human freedoms, presumes the
warrant to establish criteria which legitimize reality, and
institutes the authority to determine and then maintain
privilege. A meta-narrative aspires to totality, to purvey the
definitive. Positivism, for example, is a meta-narrative, and it
installs science as the supreme form of knowledge (Lyotard,
1984). Science equals knowledge, period. The postmodern
suspicion of meta-narratives is based on the premise that
knowledge, in all its myriad forms, is structured as discourse.
Discourse produces texts open to interpretation, and the final
interpretation is neither possible nor desirable.
To reflect postmodern concerns, psychologies must con-
sider human actions and experiences as texts. In addition,
106 Critical Art Pedagogy

postmodern psychologies must relate the individual to the

social context where reality is constructed. The focus then
becomes "local narratives" (Shotter, 1992). Local narratives,
of course, can claim no universality; they forge social and
cultural connections by affecting individual experience. Local
narratives supply what Lyotard (1984) called "know-
how"—that is, "know-how-to-speak" and "know-how-to-
hear." Individuals who share these forms of knowledge com-
prise a social or cultural group. Meanwhile, local narratives
shape those aspects of human experience which traditionally
concern psychologies: cognition, emotion, behavior, memory,
learning, perception, and so forth. Postmodern psychologies
develop new ways to understand these concepts.
When Paul Ricoeur (1978) introduced the term "herme-
neutics of suspicion," he referred to interpreting texts so as to
discern what goes unsaid, how it is significant, and how it was
shaped. The hermeneutics of suspicion is both the lever and
the lens of postmodern psychologies.
This chapter explores elements of both traditional and
postmodern psychologies and explains not only what each
form says but also how it developed. The goal is to understand
how those psychologies that cohere with the postmodern
paradigm can help us envision possibilities for a critical art
pedagogy.

Cognitive Psychology and Critical Art Pedagogy

Art educators hoped that cognitive psychology would bring to
pedagogy a rich description of the whole learner, not just a
constricted glimpse of the learner's external characteristics
and outwardly observable behaviors. Cognitive psychology
attempts to describe internal life in ways which invite con-
siderations of how mental phenomena connect with external
experience in the social, economic, and political contexts
which are of concern to critical pedagogy. The salient features
of the interior mental landscape include thinking, using
language, perceiving, categorizing, problem-solving, informa-
tion processing, symbol processing, visualizing, imagining,
attending, using judgment, using memory, experiencing emo-
tion and motivation, forming concepts, and using intuition.
We have here the principal components of cognition, and this
Psychologies for Critical Art Pedagogy 107

wide range of human cognitive activities can enrich the

critical educator's understanding of the individual learner. It
also provides organization for the field of cognitive psychol-
ogy. Cognitive psychologists have developed models of
cognition based on what they regard as the most important of
these cognitive processes: information processing, symbol pro-
cessing, problem-solving, concept formation and thinking,
and language use.
The information processing model of cognition conceives
of human mental activity as primarily a series of steps that
internalize and store representations of the world which are
formed as experience occurs. A person receives a message, or
"sensory input," from the external world. Then he or she
forms a mental representation of this message. Psychologists
call this representation "information." The person stores the
message in memory, available for later retrieval or use in inter-
acting with the external world. Cognitive psychologists who
subscribe to this model are fond of terms like "input,"
"output," "mechanism," "storage in memory" and other
analogies to computers and the cybernetic age. The motto of
adherents to the information processing model might be,
"The mind is like a computer."
Critical art educators prefer the idea that the external
world is actively constructed or represented internally or
mentally instead of "downloaded" totally into our "memory
banks" or onto Locke's tabula rasa. This representation of
"sensory input" as constructed internally or mentally implies
that learners are active agents in cognition. By extension,
students are active agents in the educational process as well,
rather than passive receptacles into which one plugs stimuli,
digital or otherwise, to produce pre-specified "outputs."
The symbolic processing model also emphasizes the idea
of the active learner and the correspondence between the
mental representation of experience and cognitive processing.
"Processing" refers to moving, referencing, relating, manipu-
lating, identifying, or otherwise dealing with symbols
mentally. A symbol is anything that stands for something
besides itself. Both spoken and written words are symbols.
Egyptian hieroglyphics, traffic lights, such gestures as a base-
ball umpire's upturned thumb, the mousetrap in The Merode
108 Critical Art Pedagogy

Altarpiece, golden circles painted above a figure's head in a

medieval painting, guardian statues depicting lions on the
pylons of ancient fortresses—these are all symbols. They
signify something other than themselves—something tangible
or intangible, visual or auditory, common or unfamiliar or
unique, sublime or vulgar, constant or changing. Symbols help
us remember experiences or, i f you will, reexperience them in
altered form. Most importantly for critical art educators, sym-
bols also allow something imagined to be experienced, either
mentally or physically.
The cognitive act of manipulating symbols actuates
human processes of deriving or creating meaning and thus
forms the link between art, education, and cognitive psychol-
ogy. Symbol processing is a particularly important part of
cognitive psychology's contribution to the foundations of
critical art pedagogy. Iconography in art—its meaning—
involves the use of symbols to communicate. Symbolic
communication forms a connection between the artist's
internal reality and the outside world that includes, sig-
nificantly, the viewer's internal reality created by his or her
experience of the art work.
A n important implication of the symbolic manipulation
model for critical arts pedagogy involves the phenomena of
polysemy and ambiguity. The realization that symbols can
have different meanings in different contexts, that a symbol's
meaning can change, and that meanings assigned to symbols
may be less than absolute are crucial foundations for critical
art pedagogy. The symbol and what it represents need not be
functionally or formally related. They are independent enti-
ties whose multiple relationships remain open to question and
to change.
This realization equips art instructors to approach stu-
dents as active learners, to respect their freedom to express
and form meaning, and to allow them to base their aesthetic
judgments on the terms of their own experiences, identities,
and cultures. Understanding the open nature of symbolic
processing as operating structurally outside the confines of es-
sentialist dogma frees art learners and art educators to
challenge official versions of the art curriculum and to reveal
how art is co-opted as an instrument of power. Further,
Psychologies for Critical Art Pedagogy 109

cognitive models bring to critical art education the under-

standing that meaning in art, at least insofar as it encompasses
symbolic manipulation, can be transacted actively, rela-
tionally, and in the context of socially situated experience.
Meaning does not reside as a constant, abstract property of a
symbol waiting to be discovered or inserted into student
memory like a morsel from a mother bird to her insistent
nestling. Placing these aspects of cognitive life at the center
of critical art learning can free students to examine through
art the nature of the connections between internal, indi-
vidualized, mental experience and external, social experience.
The third model of cognition propounded by cognitive
psychology, cognition as problem solving, also emphasizes a
view of learning and teaching that values freedom, engage-
ment, awareness, and purposeful action in the social context.
Like the two prior models, the problem-solving approach
underscores the concept that the individual constructs an
internal representation of the external world by experiencing
it. While this representation or precept cannot exactly dup-
licate what is "out there," and the cognitive precept does not
function, to use philosopher Richard Rorty's (1979) meta-
phor, as a "mirror of nature," it is a mental construction
shaped by past experiences and current contingencies.
Psychologists generally conceive of problem solving as a
flexible set of mental activities that include identification of a
problem or goal, a more precise mental representation of the
problem, a formulation and exploration of likely solutions or
strategies, an implementation of solutions, and the evaluation
of conditions to determine success or failure of problem-
solving strategies (Houston, et al., 1989; Fransford and Stein,
1984). Problem solving requires a shifting among these
procedures until one envisions success. Along the way,
cognition of this variety may take the form of incubation—or
what may be misperceived as—daydreaming, "zoning out,"
lassitude, or resting. Some psychologists consider incubation
more cognitively active than passive. It is a period of re-
sorting, of clearing the cognitive pathways in preparation for
other more overt problem-solving activities. The internal but
nonetheless active problem-solving processes in the incuba-
tion phase pose difficulties for top-down, rationalist, systems
110 Critical Art Pedagogy

analysis-based, behaviorist-oriented approaches to education.

Incubation in cognitive problem solving is generally misunder-
stood, and few educators accept it as evidence that learning is
occurring in those types of instructional applications that
follow rigid regimens like "time-on-task."
The problem-solving model of cognition with its pro-
vision for incubation is nevertheless valuable for critical
learning and teaching in all subject areas, and especially in art
education. In fact, problem solving in art may involve quite a
lot of sorting and re-sorting through various cognitive
strategies and modalities. For example, making art involves
both visual and verbal types of thinking. The verbal dimen-
sion enters the art production process on those numerous
occasions when the artist stands back to critique the work in
progress. In an internal, more or less conscious, iterative,
Socratic-like dialogue, the artist often verbally describes the
physical properties of the work, identifies and analyzes its
formal properties, interprets iconographic possibilities, and
evaluates work with respect to his or her aesthetic aspirations
for it.
The mental leaps between the verbal and the visual, and
the shifting between the internal and the external required in
any phase of the art process, can be cognitively demanding. In
this regard, the cognitive model directly challenges those
stereotypes of artists and art students as detached, non-linear,
even lazy, fuzzy-headed, daydreamer types. The outward mani-
festations of incubation and engagement in other problem-
solving processes reverse the valence in the light of this
theme of cognitive psychology. The top-down, authoritarian,
directive strategies of some traditional instructional
approaches can actually interfere with the learning process,
but the critical art educator who understands cognitive psychol-
ogy's incubation concept can develop ways of relating to
students which encourage art through greater freedom and
trust and which encourage greater freedom and trust through
art. The critical art educator also understands, however, that
the mere recognition of the involvement of cognitive ac-
tivities in art learning is insufficient by itself to allow a
teacher to take full advantage of the potential of cognitive
psychology, especially its postmodern versions.
Psychologies for Critical Art Pedagogy 111

Meanwhile, like the other models of cognition, problem

solving incorporates the property of agency into the concept
of the learner and values it over passivity.
Additional implications of the problem-solving model of
cognition for critical art pedagogy present themselves. For
example, problem-solving strategies often appear to vary be-
tween trial-and-error and sudden insight, and both strategies,
in varying combinations, seem intuitively to describe how
artists, art teachers, and art students do what they do. Both
strategies are normal, acceptable learning pathways in art, and
art instructors who accept them as such can expand the oppor-
tunities for learning to occur by avoiding the imposition on
students of a unified, one-size-fits-all mode of instruction.
Cognitive problem solving is not, however, a set of
procedures that consistently and inevitably produces pre-
conceived or intended results. Habitual, stereotyped patterns
of thinking allow an individual's experience to produce cog-
nitive interference in the problem-solving process. This
interference takes two forms, functional fixedness and mental
set (Houston et al., 1989). "Functional fixedness" refers to
the tendency to perceive objects only in terms of their con-
ventional purposes or traditionally accepted values. "Mental
set," a similar obstacle to successful problem-solving stra-
tegies, refers to the tendency of an individual to employ estab-
lished, routine, simplified procedures or skills in an attempt to
solve problems that actually call for novel or more complex
strategies.
Both glitches in cognitive functioning diminish the pos-
sibilities of critical learning and teaching in art. A critical art
pedagogy that focuses on freedom and critical awareness
increases opportunities for the development and use of creativ-
ity in cognitive problem solving. Critical art pedagogy encour-
ages the student and teacher to extend beyond the limitations
imposed by functional fixedness and mental set by contesting
traditional, stereotyped, canonical versions of how to make
art, of what is proper and of value in art, and of how an
individual should experience art.
Students, teachers, and artists who bring increased creativi-
ty to problem solving tend to spend a greater amount of time
familiarizing themselves with the problem in the context
112 Critical Art Pedagogy

where it occurs (Houston et al., 1989). The creative problem

solver develops a greater number and variety of hypothetical
solutions and spends more time exploring and evaluating
possible solutions. The problem-solving model of cognition
describes a learner who simultaneously sows the seeds and
harvests the fruits of critical awareness. Uncovering hidden
sources of oppressive influence, contesting rigidities in tradi-
tional meanings and values, and trying out new versions—
these are the cognitive processes and tasks of critical peda-
gogy-
A fourth dimension of cognitive psychology, the concept
formation model, assumes that concepts operate like symbols.
In this model of cognition, in fact, concepts are symbols
which signify an entire class or set of entities, images, events
and ideas. Concepts symbolize a class whose members share
mutual characteristics and have certain properties in common.
Some concepts, like tree, are general because they refer to a
large number of entities. Some concepts, such as oak, are
more specific and refer to a smaller number of entities or even
a singular entity. Concepts facilitate the thinking process by
allowing us to form patterns of mental and behavioral
activities which address classes of objects instead of dealing
uniquely with each and every particular phenomenon one
encounters. In a sense, concept formation unites the past,
present, and future in an individual's thinking processes.
Concepts fund memory and are the currency of past experi-
ence. They are the raw materials of thought, and they provide
a medium through which we engage the world. As human
beings begin to grow and learn, the task is not only to identify
concept names and what the concept names represent, but
also to form concepts mentally. The rules that govern the
process of concept formation must become part of the
organism's cognitive repertoire.
Contemporary cognitive psychologists generally believe
that humans form concepts by a process of hypothesis test-
ing. This process consists of mentally sensing or perceiving,
proposing an explanation or guess or theory, testing that
theory, and revising it as necessary. This explanation
intuitively satisfies critical art educators since it gives them a
point of departure for the concept of art as praxis. It portrays
Psychologies for Critical Art Pedagogy 113

humans as agent-learners who initially engage the world

through sensory apparatus, but then internally integrate
perceptions in the process of concept formation. Perception
and conception are interdependent in cognition rather than
dichotomized or positioned in a hierarchy with perception in
an inferior status. Concept formation via hypothesis testing
complements critical art pedagogy to the extent that such
testing remains unfettered, eventually becomes informed by
critical consciousness, and inspires an engagement in art as
praxis and the discovery of the emancipatory potentials of
critical art and art education. In the cognitive sense,
"hypothesis testing" is a metaphor. It is used for different
purposes than the hypothesis testing which experimental
scientific research pursues.
Earlier positivist-behaviorist theories of learning featured
learners as passive recipients of rewards or punishments for
correct and incorrect hypotheses. These rewards and punish-
ments originate "out there" objectively in the environment,
effectively disenfranchising learning as a mental event and
separating both learner and teacher from knowledge.

Language
Language is another theme of cognitive psychology that
promises meaningful contributions for developing the
theoretical foundations of a critical arts pedagogy. Both
spoken and written language involve human functions crucial
to cognition's role in artistic experience. Both forms of
language permit communication between and among human
beings. Both forms allow one to store information beyond the
present and in amounts larger than the capacity of memory.
Language also provides symbols and the procedures for using
them to construct and convey meaning. In essence, language
provides the content and the structure of thinking.
Psychologists and other scholars and researchers have
identified the components of oral language, and the most basic
component is the phoneme. In fact, phonemes are the most
basic unit of language. They are the sounds that differentiate
words from one another. In the set of words hog, dog, jog and
bog, the h, d,j and b are phonemes. Typically, phonemes
have no meanings per se. When one combines sound units in
114 Critical Art Pedagogy

ways that become meaningful, they are morphemes. Mor-

phemes are the smallest meaningful units of language. They
are usually individual words. The exceptions include some pre-
fixes and suffixes that operate as morphemes. Grammar is the
set of rules and procedures for combining morphemes into the
more complex forms of meaning comprised of phrases and
sentences.
A knowledge of and the ability to use the rules or grammar
permit communication to take place. But important problems
can occur in this process. For example, individual words can
sound identical yet have different meanings. The word "ball"
can signify a spherical object, a good time, or a dance.
Further, a sentence can appear to be grammatically or struc-
turally correct but have no discernible meaning. For example,
"Fish fly through chairs" contains a subject, verb, and preposi-
tional phrase in acceptable syntax; however, it is meaningless
in any normal context. Conversely, an incorrectly structured
sentence can successfully convey meaning. The sentence
"Fish flying waves over," despite grammatical disarray, mean-
ingfully describes what flying fish do. The most interesting
problem with grammar, however, is ambiguity. The sentence
"The trees turn to gold" has one particular meaning to hikers
enjoying an old-growth forest in October. It has a distinctly
different meaning and emotional charge, however, for environ-
mental activists protesting the clearcutting of an old-growth
forest by a logging company seeking quick profits. Each inter-
pretation is plausible and meaningful.
Linguist Noam Chomsky (1965) developed the concepts
of "deep structure" and "surface structure." Surface structure is
the outward manifestation of language as behavior. It consists
of speech sounds, sentence structure, accompanying gestures
and so on. Deep structure, on the other hand, is the person's
intended meaning. Notice that a perfect match may not exist
between deep structure and surface structure. Deep structure is
transformed or expressed as a variety of surface structure op-
tions by a set of rules called "transformational grammar,"
which permits us to express meaning in a number of ways. For
Chomsky, language becomes a matter of learning the rules for
transforming meaning or deep structure propositions into
surface structure speech, sentences, gestures and other mani-
Psychologies for Critical Art Pedagogy 115

festations. Language learning is not a matter of incorporating

the external world into the mind as meaningful units of langu-
age in the form of whole words or sentences. The developing
child more than merely copies sounds that contain meaning.
The child also learns the rules of the process whereby sounds
convey meaning.
In view of these observations, many scholars and others
who study language and meaning conclude that meaning is an
unstable property of language. Neither words nor sentences
can possibly contain absolute, objective, permanent meaning.
For cognitive psychologists, the meanings of words and sen-
tences emerge from the cognitive processes in action; such
meanings exist neither inherently nor independently in words
and sentences themselves. In short, meanings are constructed
mentally in lived experience, not received as absolute, fixed
determinations unaltered by the context in which they occur
or by the medium through which one presents them. Cog-
nitive consciousness creates and shapes meaning. Critical
constructivists and others who accept a synthesis of cognitive
psychology and critical philosophy consider words and
sentences to be "texts." As such, words and sentences are
interpretable in the context in which we use them. As social
beings, we have conventional, shared ways of interpreting
texts. These conventions do not, however, constitute an
objective, independent reality that exists "out there" beyond
the dominion of cognition. Meaning is made, not discovered.
Thus, we do not "download" the world into our minds. We
form mental representations, constructs, of our experiences
with the world. To ignore this cognitive process in attempting
to forge understandings through psychology, art, philosophy,
or education of how we function as human beings is to ignore
one of our most important, distinctly human features.

Cognitive Theories of Concept Organization

As we form concepts, we humans must also organize them,
which requires that we learn the rules of this process for form-
ing relationships among concepts. The explanation traditional
cognitive psychology offers is one of its most important
contributions to the foundations of a critical arts pedagogy
because it provides a direct connection between this body of
116 Critical Art Pedagogy

scientific theory and critical ideologies which inform class-

room practice.
Wittgenstein (1953) posited a type of category in which
members share common properties but in which all members
do not possess every property. Wittgenstein used the category
of games as an example. Some games, like chess, involve skill.
Other games, like dice, involve chance. Still other games, like
poker, involve skill and chance. In other words, no single trait
suffices for all members of the games category. As Lakoff
(1987) noted, Wittgenstein understood that categories may
contain central and peripheral members. In the category of
numbers, for example, integers are more central than trans-
finite numbers. Wittgenstein called this a "family resemblance
category."
Lofti Zadeh's (1965) concept of "fuzzy sets" is analogous
to Wittgenstein's family resemblance category. Classical logic
posits set members or non-members, ins or outs. Members are
assigned the value 1; non-members are symbolized by 0. Fuzzy
sets, by contrast, are those which can have membership values
between 0 and 1. Their membership is called "probabilistic."
This theory of concept organization provides cognitive
psychology with an important philosophical foundation as it
relates to critical pedagogy. It describes a type of thinking
ignored in schools and suppressed in such psychological
theories as behaviorism. The concepts of family resemblance
categories and fuzzy sets are congenial to critical art pedagogy
because they allow us to organize concepts with non-static
meanings. Concepts can be texts; they can be subject to con-
textual interpretations that, parallel to semiotics, require us to
construct meaning in an active cognitive process rather than
by the passive mental registration of rigid, denotative ab-
solutes prevalent in traditional schools and traditional art
programs.

Rosch's Theory of Cognitive Categorization

Eleanor Rosch's studies of cognitive categorization processes
produced compelling statements about the way human beings
perceive, recognize, and classify concepts and events in the
world around them. Although her reports remain eminently
readable, this discussion of her work relies on the account
Psychologies for Critical Art Pedagogy 117

provided by George Lakoff (1987). Lakoff placed Rosch

among the first to propose that concepts in general are
organized in terms of prototypes and basic-level category
structures. She used the term "category" to mean concept, and
she saw categorization as one of the most important issues in
cognitive psychology.
Next, Rosch posited a two-dimensional taxonomic struc-
ture for describing the operations of the human cognitive cate-
gorization system. The vertical dimension of her system in-
dicates the inclusiveness or abstractness of categories at three
levels: subordinate, basic, and superordinate. The examples
robin, bird, and animal all lie on the same vertical dimension.
Robin is the subordinate category, which is defined as having
many shared characteristics with the basic level but none that
are not also possessed by the basic level. The most con-
ceptually useful vertical level is the basic level, defined as the
level at which the category most faithfully reproduces the
physical world. Bird constitutes the basic-level category. A t
the superordinate level, one finds few shared characteristics
with the basic level. Rosch, et al. (1976) found that the basic
level is the most inclusive level at which meaningful visuali-
zation can take place. Thus, bird can be visualized, whereas
animal has no meaningful visual referent in the physical
world.
The horizontal dimension of Rosch's taxonomy lacks
these clearcut boundaries. Rather, items along the horizontal
axis cluster into categories on the basis of their resemblance
to a prototype, the most representative member of a cate-
gory. In a number of studies, Rosch (1975a, 1975b, 1975c)
found that people were overwhelmingly consistent when
selecting prototypes for all sort of categories. The proto-
typical member of a category is that member with the highest
cue validity, a measure of the degree of distinctness of the
particular features of the items. The items with this high cue
validity are those with maximum intra-category similarity and
maximum inter-category differentiation. For example, of the
category that includes penguin, robin and giant condor, most
people would identify robin as the prototypical bird.
According to Rosch, the basic level is the cornerstone of
the cognitive categorization process, and Lakoff (1987) later
118 Critical Art Pedagogy

presented the idea of "basic level primacy" as the most signifi-

cant aspect of cognitive knowledge formation. "Primacy"
means that the basic level is the level at which important
cognitive processing occurs. But those ascribing to a critical
arts pedagogy might wish to contest the idea of basic level
primacy since it appears to impose a fixed hierarchy of
meaning, especially with regards to the use of language in
learning and teaching art. The primacy of the prototype may
be more salient to the development of critical consciousness,
especially in art.
By now you can see that cognitive categorization
processes are intimately involved in learning and teaching art
and in other forms of artistic and aesthetic experience. Limita-
tions exist, however, on the applications of Rosch's findings
to critical art pedagogy. Rosch's research demonstrated the
basic-level categories to be the most inclusive categories for
which one can form concrete visual images. But her emphasis
on the basic level category as the primary level in knowledge
formation moves logico-deductive reasoning and similar
linguistic forms of knowledge to the forefront. In her
theoretical framework, criterion-referenced thinking deter-
mines category membership. For example, as a basic level
concept, bird can be meaningfully described only in terms of
rules or a fundamentally logico-linguistic definition. This
process excludes visualization and other forms of human cogni-
tive experience vital to critical pedagogy. Which is the more
"meaningful," bird or robin? The more particular is more
visually rich and replete. The more vivid is more knowable by
virtue of its integration of such multiple modalities of
knowledge as the visual, the logico-linguistic, and even the
auditory.

Prototype Primacy in Critical Art Pedagogy

Reservations aside, certain aspects of Rosch's cognitive cate-
gorization theory complement critical art pedagogy. Speci-
fically, the two-dimensional structure she theorized provides
alternative descriptions of important human mental func-
tions. Each alternative has ideological ramifications important
for the emancipatory goals of critical art pedagogy. The two-
dimensional structure features a hierarchy of fixed categories
Psychologies for Critical Art Pedagogy 119

on the one hand, juxtaposed to a continuum of variously

related concepts on the other. One axis functions mechanis-
tically with either-or options for selecting preordained
meanings and concept level memberships, while the other axis
functions relativistically with meanings constructed provi-
sionally in accord with individuals' experiences and percep-
tions. The vertical dimension portrays the learner as a vessel
into which art knowledge and skills and attitudes must be
poured. The horizontal dimension conceives of students as
active learner-artists who make choices and define their experi-
ences in personally relevant terms. The horizontal category
describes an active process of meaning construction which
portrays learners in terms which are more congenial to the
emancipatory aims of critical art pedagogy.
Specifically, Rosch's horizontal category organization
includes the active and flexible features inherent in processes
of concept formation. The individual observes multiple
qualities or characteristics of a phenomenon, and then forms
hypotheses about the category membership of the phenome-
non based on its degree of similarity to the qualities of a proto-
type previously encountered.
The vertical dimension features fixed relationships, abso-
lute determinations of the single level of the hierarchy where
a concept belongs. The degree of generality or specificity of
the qualities and characteristics observed determines a con-
cept's placement in the hierarchy and ultimately its value
relative to other concepts in a particular context. This
process imposes an immutability on language, thinking,
perception, and other cognitive processes that tends to
separate knowledge and value. Rigid categorical boundaries
occur in the human cognitive processes involved in the forma-
tion and organization of concepts; however, the critical
consciousness is alert to the consequent implicit tendency to
reify knowledge as a collection of timeless, value-free facts.
The rigidities of the vertical dimension lead to a vulnerability
to what we might call "cognitive colonization."
The concept formation processes involved in the determi-
nation of the generality or specificity of observed characteris-
tics and qualities must remain open to question because multi-
ple factors influence an individual's observations. Rosch's re-
120 Critical Art Pedagogy

search seems to advance the idea that cognitive conceptual

organization is a cut-and-dried, lock-step process. The theory
seems to de-emphasize critical recognition of the play of
multiple factors and tacit factors in cognitive concept organi-
zation, factors that should be the focus of critical scrutiny.
The vertical dimension of concept organization features
fixed relationships, absolute determinations of the precise
level of the hierarchy where a concept belongs. Meaning is, to
a large degree, determined by hierarchical placement. Since
postmodern epistemologies find meaning and value irrevo-
cably interconnected, the question of how we can shape or be
shaped by concept formation and organizational schemes is
crucial. We see from the interface of critical theory and
cognitive psychology that the degree to which we engage in
vertical or horizontal functioning can affect a critical
consciousness of how our thoughts come to be and how they
are related. The horizontal dimension invites most of the
involvement of critical consciousness in concept formation
and organization. Critical awareness can be extended to the
critical art classroom by devising instructional forms that
engage students in art experiences that call for greater use and
awareness of learning through concepts formed and organized
according to the functioning of relative and multilateral proto-
types rather than absolute hierarchies. This task is especially
appropriate in art criticism, including criticism of the stu-
dent's own productions and those of other artists.
The degree of generality or specificity of characteristics
observed determines hierarchical placement, and the rules for
this organizational scheme resist change or individual inter-
pretation. Although Rosch's vertical hierarchy has certain
explanatory powers in the field of cognitive psychology, it
describes a theory of concept organization that, i f allowed to
dominate educational thinking or to become an exclusive
instructional modality, would foreclose much of the critical
pedagogy promise, especially in the arts.
A learner observes, perceives, identifies and evaluates quali-
ties and characteristics actively and freely. A prototype is not
comprised of a fixed set of qualities and characteristics; no
single, absolute property defines the prototype or is sufficient
to determine category membership. Individuals construct the
Psychologies for Critical Art Pedagogy 121

set of qualities from their active experiences. The critical art

teacher has a fundamental choice of which cognitive process
to emphasize, the vertical hierarchy or the prototypical
continuum. The former may explain how directive instruc-
tional strategies operate. It may also offer an established
sequence for bringing students along step by step in edu-
cational tasks that involve moving from the general to the
specific (and vice versa). But it does not foster active learning,
discovery, freedom, engagement and other ends of critical arts
pedagogy.
Consider, for example, an art history unit on cubism re-
stricted to forms of thinking that are limited to hierarchical
concept organizational processes. The instruction is likely to
consist of memorizing a set of stylistic characteristics, titles,
and sets of paintings and sculptures that embody those charac-
teristics. This traditional, but often unrewarding, approach
constitutes the educational analogue to downloading knowl-
edge as data—usually limited to the experts' opinions—from
the hard disk to the floppy. In contrast, art education that
involves cognitive concept formation and organization
processes that approximate Rosch's horizontal dimension
offer emphatically greater potential for critical arts learning.
To continue the cubism example, art instructors can
operate inductively, beginning with students' own art worlds,
their perceptions and aesthetic experiences of an artist's
works or even their own art in progress. The teacher and the
students can explore, identify, analyze, compare, and evaluate
qualities and features that they notice and then define for
themselves in direct encounters with certain cubist pieces. The
stylistic qualities and characteristics are discovered and defined
from the student's experience as opposed to being taken from
the art history text and received as knowledge. Instruction em-
phasizing prototypical concept functioning might also include
how other types of art relate to cubism. The art of indigenous
Africans, for example, influenced many cubists, including,
most notably, Picasso. In discovering how this art influenced
such artists by seeing the works for themselves, students
suddenly enjoy multiple opportunities for critical growth
through art experiences that rely on prototypical thinking.
122 Critical Art Pedagogy

Accordingly, critical art pedagogy should examine stra-

tegies for promoting learning that encourages cognitive cate-
gorization processes approximating Rosch's horizontal
category system. It comes closer than the other processes to
providing a structure for critical consciousness, critical dis-
embedding, and other cognitive-based activities of critical
pedagogy. Categories formed along the vertical dimension
describe traditional patterns of thinking that critical pedagogy
considers to be manifestations of a colonized mind.
The prevailing wisdom holds that the putative objective
lens of psychological science must remain unclouded by the
philosophically derived, unabashedly ideological commitments
of critical theory. But against the backdrop of postmodern-
ism's critique of a traditional hierarchy of epistemologies, a
union between scientific results and ideological commitment is
both legitimate and compelling because it tempers the scien-
tific and increases possibilities for critical praxis in art educa-
tion.

Critical Constructivism and Post-formal Operations:

Cognitive Foundations of Critical Art Pedagogy
Joe Kincheloe (1992, 1993) has identified a path to critical
praxis in art education that begins at the interface between the
science of cognitive psychology and the philosophy of critical
theory. Originally centered on education generally, his ideas
apply as well to critical art pedagogy. In an address to the
Conference on Curriculum Theorizing at Bergamo, Ohio, in
October of 1992, Kincheloe outlined his approach to critical
constructivism. He accepts many of the concepts in Piaget's
theories of cognitive development, but has reordered their
priority to lay the theoretical groundwork for critical practice
in education. In so doing, he has strengthened the basis for a
radical conversation about art in education and about the
future of psychology itself. Having only recently emerged
from the influence of the myth of objectivity that is the
shibboleth of positivism and behaviorism, the field of
psychology has seldom spoken with a critical voice. But
Kincheloe's work has drawn attention to the expanded
possibilities for critical art pedagogy which a linkage between
cognitive science and critical philosophy can produce.
Psychologies for Critical Art Pedagogy 123

Constructivism begins with the proposition that reality as

we perceive it is determined in consciousness, not in the objec-
tive world (Rosenau, 1992; Polkinghorne, 1992). We con-
struct reality from our interpretations of our experience in
the world. Since we are at the same time a part of the world
we experience, we simply cannot achieve total objectivity.
The awareness that a knowledge of the world is mind-depen-
dent prompts the question of how the mind operates to create
this internal interpretation. Cognitive psychology attempts to
answer this question.
Kincheloe examined the operations of assimilation and
accommodation in psychology's theories of cognitive func-
tioning, especially those of Piaget, and theorized how these
operations relate to the tenets of critical theory. He pro-
ceeded by re-ordering the implicit relationship that traditional
cognitive psychology has established between assimilation and
accommodation. The reversal of priority Kincheloe proposed
can help us understand cognitive psychology within the con-
text of the radical philosophical commitments of critical
pedagogy and work toward realizing emancipatory objectives
in art and art education. Our interests as critical art educators
also coincide with the reconciliation of cognitive science with
critical understanding.
Jean Piaget envisioned the mind operating by equilibration
—that is, by adapting or balancing between two functions he
called assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation is the
sculpting of experience and perceptions to fit the structures of
the mind as they currently exist; assimilation does not force
the mind to fit the environment.
Accommodation, on the other hand, involves cognitive
change to adapt the mind to experienced events. The mind is
re-shaped to reflect better the light that falls on it during
experience. O f the two cognitive functions, accommodation
tends to be the less comfortable. Cognitive change requires
reflection and the realization that currently existing mental
structures—schemata—are somehow unable to interpret a
particular new experience. A dissonance or imbalance exists
between the mind's expectation and the experience that
engages it. The desirable response is to develop new strategies,
new understandings, new knowledge, new mental structures. As
124 Critical Art Pedagogy

you can see, this is an active process involving learning,

reflection and change.
Kincheloe pointed to a tacit positivist tendency in the
theories of Piaget and his followers that raises assimilation
over accommodation in cognitive psychology's attempts to
understand concept formation and organization, learning,
perception, higher-order thinking, and other cognitive pro-
cesses of interest to educators and artists. Although subtle, this
emphasis ought to be reversed if we expect to put into
practice such tenets of critical pedagogy as the concept of the
active learner who questions the claims of stable, absolute
knowledge and searches for meaning through the lens of criti-
cal consciousness. Critical consciousness accepts the challenge
of change which accommodation presents. The critical learner
in art, must, after all, personally experience change as well as
witness it as an abstraction in the social context. Critical
accommodation occurs in the context of critical art pedagogy
when learning links art students with the world by making
them aware that they are social and political beings who can
question codified world views and reshape their own con-
sciousness instead of acquiescing in a reshaping by and for
authorities.
In critical art pedagogy, the processes of forming aesthet-
ic judgment, aesthetic experience and framing art criticism
emphasize cognitive accommodation and transcend the limita-
tions of assimilation. Assimilation is vulnerable to manipu-
lative educational practices like those revealed when we
analogized instruction to the transfer of authorized knowledge
that goes on when data is downloaded from hard disk to a
student's blank floppy. Accommodation, or in Kincheloe's
terms, "critical accommodation," identifies sources of male-
faction in the system. It reveals how and in whose interests
knowledge came to be and how that knowledge maintains the
status quo. Art instruction that features or even draws upon
critical accommodation is critical art pedagogy.
The concept of critical accommodation is one of the
important contributions to new theoretical foundations for
postmodern art education that we can credit to the unlikely
coalition between critical theory and cognitive psychology.
Constructivism's focus is on how we form mental repre-
Psychologies for Critical Art Pedagogy 125

sentations of the phenomena we experience in the world.

Kincheloe's synthesis of Piaget's traditional cognitive theo-
ries with tenets of critical theory to develop the concept of
critical accommodation promotes the individual's conscious-
ness of tacit social, political, and psychological influences on
the cognitive processes of concept formation and thinking.
In critical arts pedagogy, to achieve critical accommo-
dation, learning must be connected to, not abstracted from,
the contexts of our students' experience. A student's art world
must be connected to the school art world, and both must
critically interact with other contemporary art worlds. The
formalism of high modernism and the tendency of traditional
art educators to emphasize art as abstract design can decon-
textualize art for the individual. It can also separate the
student from the critical accommodation processes by which
art provides meaning. The teacher who adopts a critical art
pedagogy understands that the meaning and value of an art
object change and that a symbol may take on a variety of
associations, meanings, and values for students as they become
engaged with art.
As we know, traditional art instruction tends to promote
the myths of stability of meaning and objectification of value
ascribed to individual art objects. This rigid iconographic abso-
lutism has built an archive of art objects certified as aesthetical-
ly superior. The creation and persistence of the archive has
produced essentialist instructional attitudes and techniques
that amount to downloading a file of authorized knowledge
and pre-specified aesthetic values to which art students must
conform i f they hope to reach traditional educational objec-
tives. This shortsighted process effectively delimits art instruc-
tion to cognitive assimilation and forecloses opportunities for
achieving the critical accommodation which critical art peda-
gogy seeks to create for students and teachers. Art instruction
that downloads essential knowledge and specified aesthetic
values denies students opportunities to form conceptual struc-
tures that cognitively represent their immediate, lived experi-
ences with art.
In critical art pedagogy, questions like these emerge for
teachers and students: What factors influence how we
experience and value art? What psycho-social influences help
126 Critical Art Pedagogy

determine the nature of our aesthetic experiences with art?

How does art function to support the status quo? How can we
use its power to challenge the status-quo? Who or what
controls the gates to making art, to learning about art, and to
owning art? How do we connect with our own art? What
subject matter, art skills, and evaluative criteria are legitimate,
and how did they become so? How can art experience help us
suppress sources of negative influence and illegitimate
authority over our lives? How can art learning help us achieve
emancipatory aims? By conducting a systematic search for
answers to questions like these, critical accommodation
disrupts the cognitive downloading and aesthetic indoctrina-
tion that operate surreptitiously and unchecked in traditional,
assimilation oriented forms of art instruction. Critical accom-
modation contests authorized versions of art and aesthetic
knowledge and propels students toward new experiences on
which to form cognitive structures that can then lead them
toward transformative awareness.
Joe Kincheloe's recent work in cognitive constructivism
culminated in what may become one of the most important
advances in the theoretical foundations of education since the
re-vitalization of cognitive psychology by Piaget, Bruner and
others at mid-century. Crossing, or as some would have it,
"transgressing" the borders of two important approaches to
understanding human experience—namely, Piagetian cogni-
tive-based developmental psychology and the social phi-
losophy of the Frankfurt School called critical theory—
Kincheloe and his colleague Shirley Steinberg (1993) have
created a hybrid model of thinking that they call "post-formal
operations."
The formulation of the theory of post-formal operations
was far from an inevitable next step in the history of psychol-
ogy, education, or philosophy, but the shift in our culture's
intellectual perspective from modernist assumptions to the
postmodern cultural paradigm demanded it. Breaching the wall
between cognitive psychology and critical theory, Kincheloe
and Steinberg loosed new energies and found new illumination
for the social sciences, education, and institutions like the art
world that interact with them. Their theory of post-formal
thinking links the concept of mind, traditionally an internal
Psychologies for Critical Art Pedagogy 127

entity, with the concepts of culture and society as entities

which operate in the external world. The result is the foun-
dation for a critical cognitive psychology.
Kincheloe and Steinberg deconstructed Piaget's concepts,
revealing an over-reliance on the Cartesian and Newtonian
concepts of human experience that have informed modernism
and the culture of positivism. These suspect concepts include
value-free inquiry, reductionism and operationalism in science,
the self as an independent and stable entity, and a near-unani-
mous preference for fact-based knowledge independent of
experience and designed to be inserted into students' minds by
a teacher. They argue that, contrary to ways of thinking
normalized by the culture of positivism and the misapplica-
tion of science to social and philosophical problems, the
output from the scientific method is constructed knowledge,
not discovered truth. Constructed knowledge is the malleable
and continually in-process product of discourse, a conversa-
tion among participants in accord with certain rules of the
game that govern the validity of truth-claims, designated as
"facts."
We can think of all forms of knowledge, science included,
as discourse-based transactions that fall into patterns or styles
unified by an adherence to specified rules or conventions.
These conventions are subject to the consent, accord, or
acquiescence of the participants in knowledge making pro-
cesses. Knowledge-making privileges those who understand
and can follow the rules or conform to the conventions. This
ability denotes successful individuals, "members of the club,"
or in the case of particularly successful individuals, its leaders
or experts. Powerful security systems guard positions of privi-
lege both implicitly and explicitly. Critical awareness is the
recognition that such conversations or discursive practices
situated in the socio-cultural arena shape forms of knowledge.
Critical awareness undertakes to read knowledge in any form
—scientific, literary, artistic—as a text.
These texts are, by definition, not self-disclosing; rather,
they are interpretable in the context of lived experience by
particular individuals. Critical awareness, then, undermines the
privilege of certain dominant traditions or styles of knowl-
edge, liberating the process of knowledge-making so as to be
128 Critical Art Pedagogy

universally accessible. Moreover, knowledge-making is freed

to assume multiple forms that can then connect with one
another as new, emergent forms of knowledge. New knowl-
edge may not enjoy an easy passage. Chrysalis-like, it emerges
weakened but hopeful that it can make its way in the intercon-
nected postmodern world of polychotomous discourse.
Notice the pattern in the genesis of Kincheloe and Stein-
berg's theory of post-formal cognition. They interrogated
Piaget's earlier cognitive developmental theories, identifying
limitations imposed by an uncritical acceptance of the mo-
dernist and positivist assumptions of the scientific approach.
They say that narrow definitions of thinking which equated
thinking with hypothesis formation and deductive reasoning,
and an obsessive emphasis on cause-effect relationships as the
ground for certainty and truth had shaped Piaget's concept of
formal operations. Piaget's post-formal thinking ignored
value questions which inevitably arise from situating thinking
in the socio-politico-cultural domains of lived experience.
Kincheloe and Steinberg then reshaped Piaget's theory of
post-formal thinking so that it reflects the understandings
available from postmodern critical awareness.
The primary theme of the theory of post-formal
operations is the socio-cultural "situated-ness" of cognition.
Piaget generally conceived of cognition as i f it operated
within the individual independent of determination by the ex-
ternal complex of socio-political and cultural realities that
inhere in lived experience. Kincheloe and Steinberg describe
their theory as "socio-cognitive"—that is, expanding the
locus of cognition beyond the individual to include inter-
actions with and among groups.
This expansion opens the project of describing cognition
in postmodern terms to such issues as the relationship of cog-
nition to critical consciousness, the act of revealing implicit
sources of oppression, the pursuit of emancipation by identi-
fying practices shaped by dominant social forces, and the
definition of meaning as the interpretation of texts rather
than as received knowledge. These aspects of post-formal
thinking inhere in critical discourse, a conscious and continual
shaping of meaning in the context of lived experience.
Psychologies for Critical Art Pedagogy 129

One implication of post-formal operations theory indicts

one of modernist psychology's most far-reaching and contro-
versial constructs, intelligence. Modernist psychology reduced
intelligence to an unchangeable biological characteristic that is
limited to an individual's ability to master certain logical,
linguistic and mathematical skills. Piaget called those skills
"formal operations." Many of the subsequent structures and
practices of traditional schooling depended on this definition
of intelligence, and this reductionistic definition culminated in
the practice of categorizing people according to the extent to
which they displayed a measurable ability to master these
skills. These categorization processes then provided rationales
for consigning or assigning certain groups—usually otherwise
distinguished by race, class and gender—to positions in a
relatively rigid educational hierarchy. Contrary to the demo-
cratic ideals our society professes, the categorizing often
excluded whole groups from fair access to education, eco-
nomic benefits, experiences that build self-worth and dignity,
and basic civil and human rights. As modernist, positivist
forms of psychology came to dominate social thinking, these
beliefs became conventionalized as common sense, as unchal-
lengeable, as the natural order of things and, in the popular
mind, as truths derived by science.
Post-formal cognitive theory rejects Piaget's premise that
the development of intelligence moves the individual from a
primitive stage characterized by a predominance of emotion
and subjective thinking to a more sophisticated stage charac-
terized by higher thinking, rationality, and logical, linguistic
and mathematical mastery. As one familiar example, Kinche-
loe and Steinberg adduce feminist ways of knowing. Feminist
epistemology underscores the differences between masculine
and feminine thought and perception processes. Feminist epis-
temology recognizes fundamental differences in how men and
women construct knowledge and come to know. These
differences have several implications for schooling, work,
play, and other important dimensions of life. We need hardly
note that masculine and feminine ways of knowing have yet
to be regarded, at least implicitly, as equal forms of intelli-
gence. Masculine epistemology dominates how knowledge and
intelligence shape the structures of the socio-cultural com-
130 Critical Art Pedagogy

plex. Feminine knowledge is implicitly, and in some sectors

explicitly, treated as supplementary. Masculine epistemologies
are associated with the logical and objective; feminine epis-
temologies are associated the emotional and the subjective. A
critical examination of cognitive psychology recognizes that
Piaget's designation of formal operations as the highest stage
of cognitive development reflects this problematic gender and
power asymmetry. Moreover, it tacitly perpetuates this
asymmetry by reconstructing it in the minds of students of
psychology, education, and other disciplines directly involved
with cognitive theory.
Post-formal thinking views intelligence not as a quantity
measured by logical, linguistic and mathematical reasoning
abilities innate in the individual, but as a socially constructed,
emergent, continuing process of forming interrelationships
among ideas, practices, behaviors, contexts, and outcomes
(Kincheloe and Steinberg, 1993). Its originators also note that
the Piagetian perspective assumes that the developmental
stage operates consistently across all categories of activities
and skills. But, in Kincheloe and Steinberg's formulations, this
cognitive consistency is sheer myth.
For example, educators, parents, psychologists, and many
others have long known that a child may display a set of
characteristics consistent with one cognitive in one activity
and manifest characteristics of a different stage in another
activity. In their illustration, a child may demonstrate
evidence of formal operations working with a computer, but
may reflect indices of an earlier stage when asked to discuss
the meaning of current political developments. To repeat,
Piagetian developmental theory mistakenly regards develop-
mental attributes as stable across all the child's activities, but
according to post-formal theory, cognitive development is
socially situated and manifests continual change produced by
the interaction between the individual and the environment.
Postmodern psychologies tend to reject the concept of intelli-
gence as a firm, innate set of logical abilities.
One way which post-formal operations theory explains
differences observed among children is that they have dif-
fering amounts of "cultural capital" (Kincheloe and Steinberg,
1993). Cultural capital includes language skills, dress, manners,
Psychologies for Critical Art Pedagogy 131

skin color, gender, and many other characteristics and

preferences. Certain types of cultural capital can be invested
for return in the form of position and privilege in the school
hierarchy. Children with desirable cultural traits like white
skin, standard English pronunciation, middle-class dress, and a
willingness to behave courteously receive considerable advan-
tages in school over those children who lack or withhold these
cultural endowments. The payoff can include the label: "good
student," or "successful," or "intelligent." Other forms of be-
havior, dress, and speech may be designated as "immaturity,"
"intellectual inferiority," "misbehavior," or some other
pejorative label signaling a threat to privilege. Piagetian
developmental psychology overlooks these different ways of
being, knowing, and meaning-making, and it declines to
acknowledge that some alternative forms of cultural capital
can be entirely appropriate in the cultures in which mar-
ginalized students live. In fact, other ways of being, knowing,
and meaning-making may be just as complex and intellectually
demanding as the types of cultural capital which schools
favor. In general, traditional cognitive theory ignores the
socio-cultural impact of cultural capital on the shaping of cog-
nitive development.
The creation of an interface between external and internal
human phenomena has become a major theme in post-formal
theory with significant implications for critical pedagogy. Tra-
ditional approaches to cognitive developmental psychology
have emphasized the individual's processes of assimilating or
taking-in experiences, developing understandings, and learning
bounded sets of "factual" knowledge that constitute the for-
mal academic subjects of the school curriculum. Schooling still
tends to prefer external knowledge to the exclusion of other
forms of knowing and meaning-making.
But post-formal theory advances two additional compo-
nents for the model of the cognitive assimilation of knowl-
edge. The first component is the individual's production of his
or her personal knowledge. The content of personal knowl-
edge, which necessarily ensues from the individual's lived
experiences, is unrestricted. The individual, then, actually
produces or constructs internal knowledge via post-formal
thinking.
132 Critical Art Pedagogy

The second component is the stipulation that the in-

terface between the internal life of the individual and the
external world of social experience be situated in the context
of critical understanding. Post-formal thinking includes both
discipline-based knowledge and personal knowledge, and it
frames both in the individual's critical understanding and
awareness.
These two components also appear among the tenets of
critical art pedagogy. The critical teacher leads students
toward learning experiences which integrate personal knowl-
edge and discipline-based knowledge in ways that reinforce,
rather than replace, personal knowledge. Critical pedagogy
develops the awareness that personal knowledge and disci-
pline-based knowledge can serve together as instruments of
liberation and connectedness. Post-formal thinking offers
alternatives to traditional cognitive psychology that can re-
shape schooling practices. Post-formal instruction begins with
opportunities for self-reflection to encourage students to draw
upon the internal realm of personal knowledge. Knowledge
production, not knowledge downloading, can subsequently take
place as personal knowledge and discipline-based knowledge
interact in the processes of meaning-making.

Manifestations of Post-formal Thinking

Drawing on the overall theme of post-formal thinking—that
is, the integration of personal knowledge and disciplinary
knowledge in the processes of meaning-making grounded in
critical awareness—Kincheloe and Steinberg (1993) proposed
four types of activities in which post-formal thinking occurs.
They first suggest critical epistemology. Epistemology, of
course, addresses how and why we know what we know and
how we assess truth claims about knowledge. Post-formal
thinking adds to these areas of inquiry the critical imperative
of examining embedded cultural and social forces that have
shaped our knowledge. In other words, we must learn the
history of our knowledge as well as its form and content. We
must situate ourselves in that history and see it as an on-going
cultural and social process. Post-formal teachers and students
work to identify how epistemological legacies have shaped
their current knowledge, values, and practices.
Psychologies for Critical Art Pedagogy 133

Kincheloe and Steinberg emphasized that in post-formal

thinking, subjective personal knowledge is as relevant as for-
mal, rational, discipline-based knowledge. They further sug-
gested that critical epistemology will recognize that changing
socio-cultural forces produce changes in the legitimation of
varying epistemologies. For example, school curricula of the
Cold War era emphasized science and technology. Schools
then saw knowledge as a systematic, objective, logical process
of achieving greater precision and control over a fixed set of
absolute facts and truths independent of values and the subjec-
tivities of people's experiences. Subjective forms of knowl-
edge lacked rigor and were vulnerable to various sources of
invalidity.
Teachers who engage in post-formal reflection focus on
the socio-cultural origins of their professional practices and
knowledge and imagine how to transcend negative construc-
tions that shaped their practices and knowledge and hindered
legitimation of their experiences. Post-formal thinkers engage
in a continuing questioning: a meta-epistemology, a critical
interrogation, a critique of the status of their knowledge.
Traditional forms of schooling emphasize problem solving
and therefore emphasize logical rational forms of knowledge.
This modernist tradition of schooling stands opposed to post-
formal thinking's meta-epistemology or self-reflective cri-
tique of knowledge.
The critical questioning of post-formal thinking empha-
sizes problem formation as much as problem solving. Post-
formal thinking, therefore, creates an instructional space in
which the imagination can pose problems and enact solutions
creatively. As we noted earlier, post-formal instruction begins
with reflection. In the subsequent phases of problem formula-
tion and critical questioning, it consciously deploys a critical
consciousness to guide meaning-making, thus transcending
traditional stages of cognitive development. One achieves
critical questioning, or meta-epistemology, through the ideo-
logical analyses critical theory advocates. The exposure of
oppressive cultural and social influences critical questioning
produces supplies the energy to subvert these forces and to
take emancipatory action.
134 Critical Art Pedagogy

Analyzing patterns and structures so as to uncover how

tacit influences shape our experience and knowledge con-
stitutes a second set of activities that allow post-formal
thinking to express the theme of the integration of personal
and disciplinary knowledge. Citing physicist David Bohm
(1987, 1991), Kincheloe and Steinberg distinguished two
forms of pattern exploration, the "explicate order" and the
"implicate order." The explicate order consists of patterns
formed by objective entities and phenomena that recur in
invariant form at fixed intervals and at fixed locations in time
and space. The explicate order is the rational, logical, sys-
tematic form of knowledge predicated on modernism's
Newtonian and Cartesian assumptions. The explicate order is
circumscribed by the objective physical world. The explicate
order has long the dominant approach to instruction and the
modes of learning and achievement assessment in schools.
The implicate order is composed of patterns that exist at
deeper, but less apparent levels of reality. Implicate patterns
are holistic, often unconscious phenomena or sequences that
cannot be accessed from or described by the logic of the
explicate order. Within the explicate order, problems "un-
fold." Within the implicate order, problems "enfold."
Implicate order patterns are the currency of critical and
post-formal thinking. The teacher who encourages students to
seek and form their own meanings and interpretations invites
them to engage in post-formal thinking. Likewise, the critical
process of discerning implicate order patterns of tacit assump-
tions and problems that shape our consciousness in proble-
matic ways invites post-formal thinking. Kincheloe and
Steinberg underscored the recognition of patterns of exclusion
in instructional methods and content. For example, history
from women's perspectives or from African-American pers-
pectives is overshadowed by the version of history presented
from the male-dominated military, political, and economic
arenas. Post-formal thinking recognizes these types of influ-
ences and brings them to light.
Through its critical consciousness of implicate patterns,
post-formal thinking also includes the development of what
Kincheloe and Steinberg (1993) called the "power o f
empathy." They posit this power as a cognitive activity.
Psychologies for Critical Art Pedagogy 135

Students exposed to the life-stories of outsiders, oppressed

peoples, the poor, and the different can learn how implicate
patterns of injustice operate in social institutions and how
these patterns may appear from perspectives radically dif-
ferent from the student's own.
Incorporating the identification of implicate-order pat-
terns into the educational process engages another aspect of
post-formal thinking: the ability to make meaningful connec-
tions between events, people, and objects that transcend the
traditional notions of causal relationships. A consciousness of
meaningful, but non-causal connections contributes a special
type of creativity to post-formal thinking, an intuition that
violates the borders the authority of traditions and tacit
assumptions patrol.
The third set of post-formal cognitive activities relies on
the process of deconstruction, the post-modern strategy of
confronting the world as a universe of texts to be interpreted
and thereby extracting meaning. Post-formal thinking reads
between the literal lines of a text to decode implicit or
unintended meanings. A s described by Derrida (1976) and
Culler (1981, 1982), deconstruction undermines the tradition-
al authority of the author by refusing to limit interpretations
to the author's intended meaning or a single "true" interpreta-
tion. The post-formal thinker deconstructs the text by
identifying unintentional ambiguities, omissions, contradic-
tions, and false dichotomies independent of the author's
intent. Deconstruction's primary implication for education is
crucial: Teachers and students are not bound to search for an
absolute meaning unrelated to their own experience. A p -
pearances do not necessarily mirror reality. The surface can
obscure significance. Post-formal instruction jettisons the
notions of absolute meaning and certainty about meaning.
Deconstructing prevalent attitudes and common-sense assump-
tions about the nature of knowledge reveals that emotion
merely supplements—is considered inferior to—logic in the
construction of truth; and as feminist and non-Western
epistemologies suggest, the traditional preference for reason
over emotion has sustained repression. This hierarchy, which
dominates Piaget's theory of cognitive development, is
toppled in post-formal cognitive theory. Instead, self-knowl-
136 Critical Art Pedagogy

edge through post-formal thinking unites emotion and reason.

For example, one must be emotionally committed to one's
ideas to argue, advance and apply them effectively.
Among the traditional concepts embedded in modern edu-
cational practices that post-formal theory's process of decon-
struction vigorously contests is the practice of reductionism.
Post-formal thinking views reality as holistic, as more than
the sum of its parts. "Reductionism" refers to the analysis or
representation of phenomena by breaking them down into
increasingly smaller (and less significant) parts. Kincheloe and
Steinberg likened reductionism to a single frame from a film.
Out of the context of the entire film, a single image looses its
meaning. Post-formal thinking achieves higher levels of
creativity because of its holistic engagement of the implicate
order and its simultaneously emergent intuitions of the
meaning of phenomena. It rejects the ideas that creativity
aggregates out of an assemblage of discrete parts and that it is
linearly or temporally sequential.
The fourth set of cognitive activities in Kincheloe and
Steinberg's model of post-formal operations is contextua-
lization. Post-formal thinkers perceive their experience as an
ecology—that is to say, the evolution of interconnectedness.
Meaning emerges more fully and with greater relevance in
settings that sustain interconnectedness. Post-formal instruc-
tors realize that the school culture or context can be as
important to learning as the context or techniques of instruc-
tion. For post-formal thinkers, meaning is contingent, at least
in part, on context. Cognitive perspectives rooted in
modernist assumptions isolate meaning from context. Scien-
tific experiments, for example, isolate variables in the labora-
tory to protect them from influences in the complex real
world that might compete with the experimental variables as
causes of or explanations for observed the results. Post-formal
thinkers realize that in the arena of the social sciences and
education, purported knowledge gained in the presence of
decontextualization tends to have severely limited applica-
tions in the world of lived experience. Instructors and students
engaged in post-formal thinking attend to the particularities
of time and place that make each individual's experiences
unique and the meanings drawn from these experiences signifi-
Psychologies for Critical Art Pedagogy 137

cant. One can observe the social forces that impinge on the
individual's experience in the particular context.

The Work of Rudolf Arnheim

A discussion of matters pertinent to art and its interactions
with the discipline of psychology would be incomplete without
reference to the work of Rudolf Arnheim. His major books
include Art and Visual Perception (1974), Visual Thinking
(1969), The Power of the Center (1982), and New Essays in
the Psychology of Art (1986). Strictly speaking, Arnheim is a
gestalt rather than a cognitive psychologist. The word
"gestalt," Germanic in origin, refers to an organized pattern, a
structure, or a whole. A basic premise of gestalt psychology,
one it shares with cognitive psychology, is that humans experi-
ence the world through the structures of their minds rather
than experience the world directly in an unmediated fashion.
We restructure all our experience, be it visual, auditory, tactile
or linguistic. In other words, our thinking and perceiving does
not faithfully reproduce the a world "out there." It restruc-
tures the world according to the workings of the mind. Thus,
at the core of gestalt psychology's postulate is the idea that
the whole is more than the sum of its parts. We organize
perceptual pieces into a whole to make sense of them.
Insight is central to this organizational process, and the
gestalt school regarded visual perception as the key to think-
ing processes, hence Arnheim's phrase "visual thinking." He
rejected the popular view that perception supplies the "raw
materials" of thinking. In that traditional view, the sensory
processes deliver the content, then such higher cognitive
functions as symbol manipulation and other operations more
instrumental to intellectual operations take over. Arnheim
challenged the old Cartesian duality, the split between mind
and body and its contemporary renovations as reason versus
perception and thinking versus feeling. Instead, he installed
perception as a co-partner in the thinking processes.
To illustrate his points, Arnheim borrowed the familiar
conservation problem from Piaget. A child shown two identi-
cal containers, each with identical amounts of liquid agrees
that they are equal. However, when the liquid in one container
is poured into a taller, thinner container, a younger child
138 Critical Art Pedagogy

typically says that the taller container holds more than the
shorter one holding the same amount. A n older child will
typically identify them as equal. Cognitive psychologists like
Piaget and Jerome Bruner pointed out that for one to under-
stand the equality of the differently shaped volumes, signifi-
cant higher order mental processing must take place. They
held that this processing extends beyond simple perception.
Arnheim (1974) agreed that higher order mental processing
takes place when the child realizes that the differently shaped
volumes are identical. He maintained, however, that rather
than being transcended, perception remains a critical part of
this thinking process. The better explanation is that the older
child has acquired an ability to take into account multiple
perceptions, in this case height and width, and use them
interactively. The height and width of the container are both
visual perceptions. The thinking processes, Arnheim main-
tained, never abandon perceptual functioning. Thinking
cannot occur separately from perception. Arnheim's motto
became "Perception equals conception."
Rudolf Arnheim's ideas are valuable as a foundation for
critical arts pedagogy because he demonstrated that engage-
ment in art—including art production, criticism, aesthetics,
and history—involve the same kinds of higher order cognitive
processes once exclusively assigned to supposedly more
intellectual and "basic" academic subjects such as math,
science, and history. The connection between perception and
conception is most readily accessed by the arts. In fact,
Arnheim's (1969) pipe-dream version of the ideal university
curriculum consisted of only three subjects: philosophy,
poetry, and studio art. Philosophy would provide training in
logic, art would refine thinking processes, and poetry would
invest students with a language suitable for thinking in visual
images.
Although Arnheim presented his curriculum with some
irony, he hoped educators would consider his musings a serious
resource. His work now invites critical educators to challenge
two undesirable conditions in today's schools: (1) the rele-
gation of the arts to the margins of the curriculum on the
questionable bases fashioned from positivist research driven by
economic interests of favored groups; and (2) the primacy
Psychologies for Critical Art Pedagogy 139

extended to repressive forms of schooling authorized by

essentialist forms of knowledge. As Arnheim's ideas enter the
theoretical bases of critical arts pedagogy, educators and stu-
dents will contest the legitimacy of keeping art a second-tier
subject and preserving its safe status as an enrichment activity
for privileged students, a recreational pursuit for others, or
vocational training for those deemed unfit for traditional
instruction in other academic subjects.
Arnheim's concept of visual thinking suggests that art
instruction can assume greater power as a means of addressing
emancipatory ends. The arts most readily access the demon-
strated ubiquity of visual perception in thinking processes.
Arnheim (1986) offered the addendum that art instruction—
including its studio, appreciation, critical, and historical forms
—should be based on the premise that it helps student develop
the means of dealing successfully with the environment and
becoming aware of the self. These instructional goals certainly
complement the emancipatory aims of critical art education.

"When Is Art?" and the

Theory of Multiple Intelligences
Other work important to the psychological foundations of
critical art pedagogy has emerged from Project Zero at the
Harvard Graduate School of Education. Project Zero is an
ongoing research group that studies issues relating to the
psychology and philosophy of art. It began in the late 1960s
under the leadership of Nelson Goodman, a philosopher
interested in exploring how art operates as a system of sym-
bols and how it functions as a way of knowing and thinking on
a par with other forms of knowledge (Gardner, 1989). The
name "Project Zero" reflects the state of knowledge about
these topics at the time: zero.
In 1977, Goodman wrote an essay entitled, "When Is
Art?" with particular relevance to the task of theorizing
foundations for critical practice in art education. He acknowl-
edged the difficulty, if not the impossibility, of achieving an
adequate comprehensive definition of art. Instead, he set out
to establish a flexible set of characteristics of art which
operate like criteria. Goodman's art is not categorically
defined in general terms fixed forever and always; instead, he
140 Critical Art Pedagogy

suggested indicators so that we may know art when we

encounter it. He also argued that philosophical and psycho-
logical perspectives on the arts should be integrated into
research.
In his essay, Goodman proposed five "symptoms" or
criteria peculiar to art: (1) syntactic density, (2) semantic
density, (3) relative repleteness, (4) exemplification, and (5)
multiple and complex reference. While a detailed analysis of
Nelson Goodman's ideas would extend beyond our scope here,
one should note that their most significant implication for
critical art pedagogy is to refocus the question of the nature of
a work of art from an analysis of the art object to an analysis
of the art beholder. Goodman's symptoms are not objective
templates that function according to such limited options as
"all" or "none" or "necessary" or "sufficient." Instead, he con-
ceptualized art as a form of human experience, primarily
cognitive, but also open to description in terms of aesthetic
and critical considerations. Goodman's approach has helped
free art education from the modernist and formalist restric-
tions imposed by a preoccupation with the object-ness of art.
Howard Gardner's 1982 synopsis and explication of these
concepts provides a useful and far more thorough presentation
of Goodman's ideas.
When the leadership of Project Zero passed to David
Perkins and Howard Gardner, its research program came to
center more on a cognitive developmental psychology per-
spective and its implications for art and art education. Perkins
and Leondar (1977) edited Cognition and the Arts, an early
and influential contribution to the now widely accepted pro-
position that the arts offer far more than decorative, pleasant
diversions; the arts, in fact, involve many of the most impor-
tant cognitive processes in the development of mental life.
Meanwhile, Howard Gardner went on to produce a
prodigious amount of scholarship: research, essays, commen-
tary, and such books such as The Arts and Human Develop-
ment (1973), Artful Scribbles (1980), and Art, Mind, and
Brain (1982). In his 1983 work, Frames of Mind, he
presented his famous Theory of Multiple Intelligences, which
has profound implications for art education in general and for
a critical arts pedagogy in particular. According to Gardner's
Psychologies for Critical Art Pedagogy 141

reconceptualized definition, intelligence is the ability to con-

tribute something valued by a community or culture. This
contribution might include the solution to a serious problem,
or the production of required or desired goods or the per-
formance of valued service (1983, 1993). Gardner rejects the
concept of intelligence as a singular general mental capacity
present in varying degrees across the population and quantified
as the familiar IQ score.
The IQ score was developed in France shortly after the
turn of the century by Alfred Binet. Its purpose then was
essentially the same as it is now: to predict the academic
performances of individual students so as to classify them
according to their abilities to profit from schooling. Psycho-
logists at Stanford University adapted Binet's test for use in
the United States, hence the title "Stanford-Binet IQ Test."
Numerous IQ tests inspired by the Stanford-Binet have
emerged over the years. Some are shorter, some are longer;
some are orally administered, some are pencil-and-paper tests;
some are for groups, some are for individuals; some are for
young children, some are for adolescents or adults. A l l are
expensive. In fact, the testing industry is an enormous
financial entity, and standardized tests now infest the schools,
the military and the workplace. Despite their ubiquity, how-
ever, they remain controversial. Charges of cultural bias in IQ
testing have gained enough credence to cast doubt on the once
widespread assumption of the infallible IQ score as the single
valid quantitative expression of human potential. Moreover,
all IQ tests are based on the premise that intelligence is an
individual's fixed capacity for learning.
Gardner repudiated the concept of intelligence as a single
capacity as far too narrow. Also, this definition is simply
counterintuitive to our experience. He believes that psycho-
logists and researchers have been regarding intelligence as only
part of what it really is. The single capacity concept meto-
nymically limits the definition of intelligence to its logical,
verbal, and mathematical components. A few parts, though
they may be important parts, are substituted for a complex
whole.
Certainly this metonymy holds true for IQ assessment. IQ
tests measure few i f any skills beyond linguistic, logical, and
142 Critical Art Pedagogy

mathematical abilities, leaving behind unnoticed other sig-

nificant indications of human potential. But as this one-
dimensional concept of intelligence moved from academic
abstraction to reality in the schools, its darker implications
became apparent. From a critical perspective, the assessment
process is insidious. A n individual's intelligence, unarguably
the most prominent index of human potential, is described
incompletely in terms of verbal and mathematical skills alone.
The assigned score becomes, in effect, a rank that in turn
determines access to learning, opportunity, status, work, and
many other dimensions of life. Not only does this relatively
unchallenged idea virtually dictate the course of individual
lives, but schools and their curricula are constructed around
the tasks of developing verbal and mathematical skills to the
exclusion of other abilities. From a critical perspective, the
constrictions of the single capacity theory of intelligence also
serve definite economic goals. Verbal, logical, and mathe-
matical skills assume value commensurate with their utility in
industrial production. Students receive status and access to
education and other opportunities to the extent to which they
empirically manifest the likelihood of becoming useful in
specific ways that conform to the interests of those at the top
of the economic hierarchy. A student may well exhibit many
other facets of potential, but they are secondary to those
skills that are favored in the mechanized culture of positivism.
It is a short leap to a realization of how the single capacity
concept of intelligence marginalizes art, music, dance and
theater.
Gardner formulated his new concept of intelligences with
the caveat that they are not to be regarded as inflexible,
established scientific law. Further reflection and research, he
acknowledged, may lead to changes, as in all theories. The
importance of Gardner's ground-breaking approach to intel-
ligence and its implications for critical pedagogy is that it
establishes the efficacy of a pluralistic version of mental
ability that replaces the more limited and more limiting one-
dimensional construct of intelligence as the innate general
ability to learn. It opens educational opportunities to once-
silenced groups
groupsand
andcreates new
creates respectability
new and and curricular
respectability
space for types of knowledge that have traditionally been of
space for types of knowledge that have traditionally been of
Psychologies f o r Critical A r t Pedagogy 143

little use to power interests. Gardner's Theory of Multiple

Intelligences is, in fact, quite practical: It provides a platform
for challenging schools to serve all students better by recog-
nizing and legitimizing overlooked forms of abilities and
providing instruction designed to develop them. The Theory
of Multiple Intelligences helps make art a dangerous subject.
The seven intelligences Gardner posited begin as con-
genital biological potentials that exist in differing amounts in
different individuals. Each potential or combination of poten-
tials is then augmented by a process of social construction.
This means it is developed environmentally through social
interaction in the world—that is, through schooling, work,
play, the family, and other cultural agencies. The Multiple
Intelligences Theory also stipulates that a prominent ability
in one intelligence does not predict or imply ability in another
intelligence. Thus, the Multiple Intelligences Theory accom-
modates the intuition that "some people are better at some
things than others."
To repeat, Gardner identified these seven areas of human
potential he regards as intelligences: linguistic, logico-mathe-
matical, spatial, musical, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, and
intrapersonal.

1. LINGUISTIC INTELLIGENCE is verbal ability, the ability to use

words in valued ways in both oral and written forms.
Persons with high degrees of linguistic intelligence may be-
come successful writers, dramatists, poets, speech makers,
and so forth.

2. LOGICO-MATHEMATICAL INTELLIGENCE is the ability to think

and work in an analytic, reductionistic framework. Scien-
tists are examples of those with high degrees of logico-
mathematical intelligence.

3. S P A T I A L I N T E L L I G E N C E is the ability to produce and work

with representations of the three-dimensional world. A r -
chitects, artists, designers, engineers, and surgeons exempli-
fy this intelligence.
144 Critical A r t Pedagogy

4. is the ability to use sound aesthet-

M U S I C A L INTELLIGENCE
ically. Beethoven and Mozart provide examples of
universally acknowledged musical intelligence. This ability
is the intelligence in which it is perhaps most evident that
cultural context determines, to a great extent, what consti-
tutes the highest forms of a particular intelligence. In the
early twentieth century, Paderewski was considered the
greatest pianist of all time. Today, he is dismissed as
having been technically sloppy and ostentatious (Walsh,
1993).

5. BODILY-KINESTHETIC INTELLIGENCE involves using the body,

in whole or in part, to solve problems or to create. Ath-
letes, surgeons and dancers exemplify this intelligence.

6. INTERPERSONAL INTELLIGENCE is often referred to as "social

skills"—that is, the ability to work with people to accom-
plish relatively complex undertakings. Teachers, mini-
sters, politicians, and salespersons usually exhibit high
degrees of interpersonal intelligence.

7. INTRAPERSONAL INTELLIGENCE is effective self-knowledge

leading to self-esteem and self-direction. "In-tune," "spiri-
tually blessed" people tend to have high degrees of
intrapersonal intelligence.

Perhaps the most convincing argument for this Multiple

Intelligences Theory came as a question Gardner posed at a
conference in Columbia, South Carolina, in 1989 (Moody,
1990). He asked his audience to list some of the most impor-
tant and influential people of the modern era. As this Socratic
exercise progressed, Einstein, Virginia Wolfe, Igor Stravinsky,
Picasso, Martha Graham, Gandhi, and Freud joined the list.
Gardner then asked which of these persons was the most
important and which was most intelligent. A consensus
emerged that his question was stupid. A l l were influential in
their own spheres of endeavor and all possessed remarkable
degrees of special abilities. Each had made indelible marks on
our culture. The question of which had the highest IQ was
clearly immaterial.
Psychologies for Critical A r t Pedagogy 145

The topic of this conference was to identify the impli-

cations of multiple intelligences for art and music education,
and the possibility of an eighth category, artistic intelligence,
became a major focus of the discussions. Gardner argued that
no convincing case yet exists to support a separate artistic
intelligence. Instead, he and others take the position that art
is a complex amalgam of several intelligences used for aes-
thetic purposes.

New Psychologies
A great deal of scholarly effort has been expended attacking
behaviorism, so much that a lengthy examination of its short-
comings tailored for teachers interested in critical art peda-
gogy is quite unnecessary. With its myopic exclusion of all but
observable and quantifiable outward behaviors, behaviorism has
long dominated the field and, in so doing, has compromised
psychology's theoretical contribution to educational practice.
It now stands revealed as incapable of promoting critical art
pedagogy's aim of engaging students with art and the art world
so as to achieve critical awareness and emancipation. Beha-
viorism provides a description of the learner which is too
impoverished for inclusion in the foundations of critical art
pedagogy. It is vapid and incomplete at best. It is misleading
and malfeasant at worst. In short, it lacks ecological validity
—that is to say, any relevance to real life. It fails to
acknowledge the complexities that people living their lives
experience. At least part of the failure of behaviorism's contri-
bution to education lies in its lack of an appropriate approach
to aesthetic experience and cognitive operations. Reductionis-
ts, mechanistic approaches to human affairs like behaviorism
invariably preclude access to the fullness of life experience.
As behaviorism's narrow concepts lost their allure, and as
cognitive models of mind emerged, psychologists, educators,
and other consumers of theory-based research began to realize
that meaning, not behavior, was the essence of, the funda-
mental unit of learning. A n increasingly important subject of
inquiry in psychology is, for want of a better term, "psycho-
logical epistemology." Psychological epistemology differs
from learning theory, which operates at a more applied level
and preoccupies itself with understanding learning as behavi-
146 Critical Art Pedagogy

oral change. Instead, in some of its manifestations, psy-

chological epistemology is more systems-level or philoso-
phically oriented, seeking a general understanding of how the
mind engages in knowing.
Three new approaches to characterizing the learner in
terms of mind, meaning, and knowing have recently emerged,
and they share common epistemological roots in cognitive
psychology, particularly its emphasis on the active construc-
tion of experience. They are (1) narrative psychology, (2)
discursive psychology, and (3) an interesting meta-theory of
psychology as an architectonic productive art.
While cognitive psychology gained recognition as the
most fertile system of psychology on the contemporary intel-
lectual landscape, profound changes were occurring in such
other theoretical and applied fields of knowledge as literature,
literary criticism, linguistics, semantics and semiotics—disci-
plines that concerned themselves with understanding human
experience and its meanings. Psychology often served as a
theoretical resource for these disciplines and was, in turn,
influenced by them. Among the more interesting of these
recent developments pertinent to critical art pedagogy are the
interactions between cognitive psychology and literature and
literary theory. These connections prompted the emergence
of a new form of psychology referred to as "narrative psychol-
ogy." In a parallel, but distinctly different interaction, a con-
sortium among the fields of cognitive psychology, linguistics,
semantics, and semiotics has given rise to a perspective
known as "discursive psychology."
The new psychologies stand in stark contrast to beha-
viorism and other logical-deductive forms of psychological
science. These new psychologies offer alternatives to the tradi-
tional perspectives of behaviorism that ignore the rich particu-
larities of human experience, operate in thrall to the positiv-
ist paradigm's sheltered certainties, and preserves positivism's
limitations. Old psychologies limit themselves to systematic
searches for objective, law-like general truths about the world
which are waiting "out there" to be discovered and verified,
typically by what their adherents call "value-free quantitative
methods" conscripted from such physical sciences as chemis-
try and physics.
Psychologies for Critical A r t Pedagogy 147

The new psychologies, by contrast, concentrate on finding

meaning and significance in lived human experience. These
psychologies turn away from positivist psychology's value-
blindness to reengage the study of the human mind as a more
humanistic endeavor. In A c t u a l M i n d s , P o s s i b l e W o r l d s
(1986), Jerome Bruner use the expression "epiphanies of the
ordinary" to describe the meanings and understandings seen
through the interpretive lens of the new psychologies focused
on particular times, places and individuals.
The new psychologies generally adopt qualitative forms of
inquiry to replace quantitative methods. They seek to un-
derstand rather than to prove a hypothesis by rejecting its
converse. (A later chapter on the topic of research styles for
critical art pedagogy explores this theme and the nature of
qualitative research in greater detail.) The postmodern impulse
is to reject psychology as a whole because of its apparently
inherent, irresistible proclivity to frame its systems as grand
narrative. But architectonic psychology, narrative psychol-
ogy, and discursive psychology offer an epistemological basis
for rejecting the terms that have historically led to the
establishment and acceptance of grand narratives. This feature
both unites the three and makes them valuable theoretical
resources for critical art pedagogy.

Walter Stroud's Architectonic Psychology

An architectonic model was developed recently by Walter
Stroud (1997), who sought to provide a coherent theoretical
context in which science, ethics, and art are integrated. Stroud
develops a case for the reconstruction of psychology as a
discipline according to the workings of his model. Its com-
ponents include sensory-perceptual functions, cognitive func-
tions, emotional functions, instrumental functions, general
activation and drive functions, and provision for "input" and
"output," features commonly addressed by most systems of
psychology. The details of the inner workings of the model
need not complicate our present discussion here. But the philo-
sophy underlying the workings is important to developing
theoretical foundations for a critical art pedagogy.
The well-known dualities between mind-body and theory-
practice illustrate the need for a project like Stroud's architec-
148 Critical Art Pedagogy

tonic model. The prevailing view is that many of psychol-

ogy's current intellectual difficulties stem from these episte-
mological splits contrived long ago to deal with philosophical
problems understood differently today.
Stroud intends the term "art" to mean generally any
practice, application, productive operation, performance, or
active doing. The Greek word, "techne" is generally translated
as art in this sense. The term "architectonic" also derives
from the Greek words a r c h e and t e k o n i k o s . The former means
"master;" the latter means "builder." Architectonic art is the
pursuit of inquiry so as to situate the understandings it leads to
in all ways of knowing. These ways of knowing fall into three
categories: science, ethics, and art. These ways of knowing are
integrated in the psyche.
The implications and applications of the architectonic
model of psychology for education, art, and other disciplines
remain a bit vague; however, Stroud's model and critical art
pedagogy have many parallel aspirations and inspirations. One
of these is John Dewey's conclusion that we have inherited
from Greek philosophy the problem of the inability to unite
theory and practice (or art theory and art). More recently,
the writings of philosopher Jurgen Habermas and others at the
wellspring of critical theory show how the traditional bifur-
cation of theory and practice has precipitated many of our
contemporary social and individual problems. Habermas and
others called for new understandings of reality in which the
moral, conceptual, and practical dimensions were integrated
(Ingram, 1987; Stroud, 1997). Stroud describes his model as
providing the design for an "integrated perception" for
approaching psychology so as to integrate the three domains.
Theory and practice would be better aligned, and their
alignment would be subject to transformations, thoughtful
reflection, and deliberate judgments regarding the ethical and
moral implications which knowledge claims compel. This
feature of the architectonic model would effectively free
psychology and the disciplines it influences from restraints
imposed by positivism's myths of objectivity and value-free
facts. Infusing a theory-practice rapprochement with consider-
ations of the ethical and moral implications of acting,
knowing, and practicing means that judgment and value forma-
Psychologies f o r Critical A r t Pedagogy 149

tion processes are consciously elevated to equivalent status

among the constituent components that qualify as knowledge.
Stroud's architectonic model joins critical theory and
other postmodern epistemologies in the premise that, con-
trary to the inherent premises of naive scientific positivism,
questions of knowing and truth blend with questions of value.
If it is reconstructed along the lines the architectonic model
suggests, psychology will no longer operate as a traditional
science. Instead, it will systematically produce understandings
of human experiences that include recommendations for
ethical practice as well. The point is, a b i n i t i o , the new
architectonic psychology perceives the three forms of human
knowledge and acting as integrated in the psyche. They
comprise an infrangible triad that is definitively human and
definitively postmodern.
It took elements from old-line psychology, philosophy,
and related modes of thought to construct a tripartite
hierarchy of human knowledge. The separation of theory
from practice and the separation of both from ethics repre-
sented the conventional wisdom for a long time. The conven-
tional epistemology rested on the premise of objectivity and
the presumption that the real world exists independent of
human experience. This convention clouded the lens of
science, producing illusory visions and maintaining the
trisected dimensions of theory, ethics, and practice.
Aristotle's concept of knowledge initiated the tripartite
model 2,300 years ago. He identified t h e o r i a , p r a x i s , and
p o i e s i s as three separate forms of knowing. Theoria, roughly
equivalent to modern science, inquires into the nature of the
physical world with the purpose of understanding phenomena
by observing their operations and deriving abstract principles
from the knowable world's uniformities. The abstract princi-
ples calcify into scientific truths and remain more or less
constant. Theoria searches for constant generalities that are
therefore true.
Praxis, equivalent to developing moral knowledge,
involves processes of relative judgment with regard to the
means used to attain "The Good." Praxis is applicable to
society as well as to the individual. The "good life" may refer
150 Critical Art Pedagogy

social justice as well as to an individual's quality of life. Praxis

deals in relative judgments about interpretations of the good.
Poiesis generally means application or art in the sense of
making a product of any type, not just an aesthetic object.
For Aristotle, any kind of skill in the practical world consti-
tuted poiesis. In short, poiesis refers to the active production
of either the unique or the ordinary.
As Stroud observes, scholars have long found it proble-
matic that Aristotle saw no way to relate the three types of
knowledge in the context of lived human experience. After
Aristotle, other influential thinkers inherited this problem, but
none could find a solution. Two examples from mainstream
philosophy include Descartes' fundamental duality and Kant's
distinction between "willed events" in the moral dimension
and "caused events" in the scientific or natural world. Ques-
tions accessible to one type of knowledge were inaccessible to
another type. Theoria could not address ethical dilemmas.
Poiesis could not explain, for example, weather phenomena
so as to allow one to make predictions.
Separate forms of knowledge then began to raise another
problem: one type typically strove to supersede the others in
perceived importance. Theoria, or science, began to dominate
our understanding of human affairs. Thus, the nature,
methods, explanations, even the very concerns and questions
of both poiesis and praxis underwent a devaluation. Theoria,
and later its offspring, the scientific method, became synony-
mous with truth.
The architectonic model is a potentially valuable resource
for critical art pedagogy because it adds support from another
discipline, psychology, to the pedagogy's philosophical
postulates. That this support comes from a discipline tradi-
tionally allied with science lends it credibility; in a sense, it
triangulates and affirms critical art pedagogy's value judg-
ments. We see this confirmation accomplished when we note,
apropos the concept of judgment, that all three ways of
knowing—theoria, praxis, and poiesis—are integrated in func-
tions involved in judgment formation. Stroud, citing the work
of systems theorist George Vickers (1983), radically expands
the concept of judgment to encompass the performance of all
affairs and functions of human life, including assessing infor-
Psychologies for Critical A r t Pedagogy 151

mation, choosing options, and taking action—three categories

analogous to Aristotle's theoria, praxis, and poiesis, respec-
tively.
Stroud suggests that these three forms of knowing operate
simultaneously and interdependently in human judgment. The
conjunction of reality judgments and value judgments in the
overall judgment process which is so central to lived experi-
ence illustrates this integration. Reality judgment is the pro-
cess of determining what is r e a l or relevant or experienced as
phenomena in the world. In this process, one observes,
investigates, and reasons in order to form a representation to
oneself of nature or the phenomena experienced. In forming
this representation, the sensory-perceptual system of the
architectonic model supplies the empirical observation or
"input." The cognitive system supplies the investigation and
the reasoning. The result is a reality judgment—that is to say,
the way of knowing described earlier as theoria or scientific
knowledge. One should note at this point that the architec-
tonic model accepts the central feature that happens to unite
scientifically based cognitive psychology and philosophically
based critical theory and critical constructivism. This feature
is the acknowledgment that reality is constructed by means of
the human mind operating to form representations of experi-
ences and phenomena.
Although reality judgments supply the "facts" of knowl-
edge, they do not incorporate the physical world in its
entirety. There may well be more "out there" than human
beings can receive and convert into facts. Instead, reality
judgments are selections which are identified in a process by
which value judgments determine the validity of facts.
Salience is determined, not given, in interpreting phenomena.
Further, this determination is an act of valuing or selecting.
Valuing—that is, praxis—thus operates along with reality
judgments as a co-determinant in the knowledge production
processes of the mind which were once considered solely the
province of theoria—the objective, rational basis of scientific
knowledge. Value judgments and reality judgments are the dual
components of the art of judgments.
Walter Stroud believes that value judgments guide reality
judgments. This guidance can, of course, take positive or
152 Critical Art Pedagogy

negative turns and may not always be apparent. But critique

and critical pedagogy can discover the terms of the relation-
ship between value judgments and reality judgments in the
overall construction of knowledge as the architectonic model
describes it. Critical pedagogy accepts the challenge to make
this relationship apparent and to legitimate the integration of
facts and values as a valid educational outcome.
Although reciprocity exists among almost all components
of the model, it does not extend to the relationship between
value judgment and reality judgment in the matter of valida-
tion. Value judgments may guide, inform, and otherwise deter-
mine the merits of reality judgments. But especially when
they take the form of scientific knowledge, reality judgments
cannot determine issues of value. Ethical validation requires
further valuing. Science can clarify, but not decide, moral
issues. Stroud cites as an example the use of science to adduce
evidence that the driver of a car involved in a fatal accident
was either drunk or in a diabetic coma. Science can only pro-
vide evidence; our legal system reaches a moral decision that
takes into account distinctions regarding intent to determine
culpability.
Stroud's architectonic model offers critical art educators a
theoretical view of mind and human behavior that folds
objective knowing and subjective knowing into simply human
knowing. As such, Stroud takes another step in the develop-
ment of understandings aimed at closing the gap between the
forms of knowing that resulted in the disenfranchisement of
value formation as an important component of the mind.
Traditional psychology's relegation of valuing to a status in
the psyche secondary to reasoning has had an enormous
impact on art education. Art production, aesthetics, art
history, and art criticism are all forms of art knowledge with
valuing as their principal activity. The three latter forms of
art learning seldom appeared in the art curriculum before the
appearance of the contemporary policy movement known as
"discipline-based art education." Where aesthetics and criti-
cism were included in traditional art instruction, the tendency
was to view them as sets of facts received from experts. The
facts were to be inculcated in students rather than constructed
Psychologies for Critical A r t Pedagogy 153

in processes students engaged in to learn how to form value

judgments of their own about art.
Before its contemporary forays into cognitive psychology
and newer systems of psychology influenced by postmodern
epistemologies, psychological science considered aesthetic
experience a noteworthy mental phenomenon only to the
extent that one could describe it in operationalized, quanti-
tative terms and observable behavior. Daniel Berlyne (1974)
and other investigators of psychological aesthetics defined
aesthetic behavior as verbally expressed responses to forced-
choice questions, as observable exploratory behavior like
looking time, and as physical arousal measures like heart rate
and respiration. We can certainly understand why the art
education establishment has practically abandoned psychology
as a theoretical foundation for practice. Stroud's architectonic
model, however, offers a basis for rapprochement with its
integration of subjective and objective ways of knowing and
its stipulation of these ways as necessary components of the
human psyche. The architectonic model offers a compelling
theoretical allegiance between critical pedagogy and psychol-
ogy broadly defined.

Narrative Psychology
A temptation always arise to confuse narrative psychology
with "grand narrative," the self authorized, hegemonic "group-
think" tacitly imposed on society as the official version of the
way things are and that critical pedagogy seeks to subvert. B y
contrast, the basic idea of narrative psychology is that
narrative—that is to say, a story—is fundamental in human
mental life. Much of what we "know," what we accept as
knowledge, comes to us in the form of stories. Not surprising-
ly, narrative psychology includes a number of definitions of
narrative. But for our present purposes, we can assume nar-
rative to be a communicable description of experiences in-
volving meaning formation. Thought, or knowledge making,
is a form of storytelling. The mind's structure and features
result from meanings formed in the structure of a narrative.
The individual's internal cognitive representations of experi-
ences in the world take the form of narrative. Narratives
occur in our everyday lives as well in cultural artifacts like
154 Critical Art Pedagogy

novels. Further, narratives are ubiquitous and virtually infinite

in number. In fact, they constitute a monumental presence in
our lives at all levels. At the individual level, narrative func-
tions to provide a meaningful life story. A t the group level,
narratives serve to establish unity by transmitting shared
values and symbolic meaning. Narrative psychologist Donald
Polkinghorne (1988) defined narrative as the organizational
scheme people use to give meaning to their personal experi-
ences at particular times and in particular contexts. To an
extent, narrative makes particular personal experience mean-
ingful and, in turn, makes life seem understandable, sensible,
and purposive. Likewise, it relates the past and the future to
present events. Narrative establishes possible significance
between events and actions. Narrative is, in short, the stories
people make from their experiences.
Storytelling, as Bruner (1986) paraphrases Paul Ricoeur, is
"worldmaking"—that is, describing the world as its represen-
tations which are constructed in the cognitive processes of
people as they experience it. We experience the world as a
series of stories or texts, that is, narratives, which we
reinterpret or re-create in cognitive functioning. Wolfgang
Iser called this re-creation the "virtual text." In a sense, the
text helps a reader become a writer. Creating virtual text is
the process of forming meaning or knowledge. Narrative
functions less to determine the nature of meaning than to
provide guidelines for the individual to create meaning. N o
one correct virtual text waits out there to be discovered;
rather, each individual brings past narratives into play.
Properties, features, and structures of narrative influence the
properties, features, and structures the reader re-creates or
assigns as meaningful in the virtual text. Properties of the
narrative, to use Bruner's interesting phrase, "recruit the
reader's imagination" in interpreting narrative.
Narrative psychology considers all forms of knowledge to
be storytelling, even (take note) science and mathematics.
The domains of science and math simply vary radically from
literature and art in storytelling style. Style is a rubric that
includes properties, features and structures. Narrative features
are merely the codes by which the reader forms meaning, not
absolute indications of objective reality. Narrative psychol-
Psychologies f o r Critical A r t Pedagogy 155

ogists refuse to rank one style of storytelling above another in

a hierarchy of epistemological value. The value of narrative
style depends on the human context in which its components
function as codes for knowledge formation. The issue of
interest is how the individual uses these components to form
meaning.
At the genesis of art is an example of how narrative,
through its stylistic features and structures, can inspire dif-
fering meanings. The caves of Lascaux and Altamira are sites
of knowledge-making that constitute prolegomena of science,
art, religion, literature and education. Art historians and
anthropologists analyzing the drawings of bison and other
game animals there include all of these forms of knowledge as
functions of the narrative. Each site is a single vessel holding
the various elemental forms that became these intellectual
realms of human experience.
The drawings constitute art in that they are an individual's
graphic depiction of his or her direct visual experiences. The
caves were sites of religious experience in the sense that we
now believe that shamans conducted animist rituals for their
followers there. They journeyed deep into the cave to behold
their shamans' interconnections with the supernatural world
as represented by the spiritual counterparts of animals and
other objects in the natural world. These rituals must surely
have taken narrative form since they depended upon a type of
communication that involved the creation of shared meanings
and signs.
We also believe that hunters, perhaps young hunters under-
going rites of passage, were educated by stories centered on
the graphic depictions of prey on the cave walls. Elder narra-
tors probably described how animals looked and moved, and
perhaps issued rules for the hunt. We also believe that a sha-
man would ritually " k i l l " the animals by drawing the arrows
and spears that pierce their bodies on the cave walls.
In a sense, this ritual fulfills an important function of
science since in the animist religious belief, the ritual of killing
the drawing precipitated the actual kill later, thus replenishing
the food supply. Accordingly, the ritual kill helped believers
predict and control important events and forces in the envi-
ronment.
156 Critical A r t Pedagogy

But, more importantly, these functions resided simultane-

ously in the acts of making meaning through the description
of lived experiences by the paleolithic humans in their world.
As each function evolved into a differentiated form of knowl-
edge, the properties linking it to narrative remained.
Narrative psychology also legitimates multiple interpre-
tations of a given narrative as text. One of the most powerful
characteristics of narrative is "polysemy," the property of
having or being open to several meanings or the capacity to
be interpreted from several perspectives. A symbol may
represent several meanings, and scholars characterize and
categorize dimensions of meaning formation in various ways.
Bruner (1986) recalled the early Biblical scholar Nicholas of
Lyra, who differentiated four levels of interpretation: l i t e r i a ,
m o r a l i a , a l l e g o r i a , and a n a g o g i a . These four levels cor-
respond to literal, ethical, historical, and mystical modalities
of knowing. The contemporary literature scholar, Frank
Kermode, has identified two narrative features: sjuzet and
f a b u l a . Sjuzet is the sequence of events, actions, and hap-
penings that combine to form plot. F a b u l a is theme or
implicit expression of an abiding human concern. Kermode
theorizes that the two interact continually and in many ways
throughout a narrative to engage the reader in the iterative
process of creating Wolfgang Iser's virtual text.
Jerome Bruner (1986) identified other scholars who con-
tributed to narrative psychology's concept of polysemy
(1986). For example, Roman Jakobson characterized meaning
formation from verbal communication as referential, expres-
sive, poetic, conative, phatic, and metalinguistic. In his book
S-Z, Roland Barthes offered five additional codes for
interpretation of narrative. While we need not explicate each
of these, taken together, they confirm that texts offer multi-
ple meanings. In fact, it may be impossible to understand texts
univocally. Narrative psychology, at least, admits of no
single, overarching interpretation. We explore and interpret
texts for meanings which constitute subjective lived experi-
ence, not exclusive versions composed of scientifically
verifiable, law-like, objective, absolute truth.
Bruner adduced another narrative feature which elicits the
reader's engagement in the process of creating meaning:
Psychologies for Critical A r t Pedagogy 157

presupposition. "Presupposition" means that a narrative

evokes implicit meanings in addition to explicit ones. It
invites a reader to make predictions, tentative meanings and
hypotheses, and to identify several possibilities.
Yet, another of Bruner's evocative narrative features is
subjectification. Some authors describe an objective world;
they think everyone knows reality in the same way. But
"subjectification" establishes reality or describes the world
through conscious minds and as the lived experiences of
characters. It invites a reader to form a vision of reality
through narrative clues contextualized in characters' visions
of reality—that is, their experiences and observations—rather
than by passively downloading an authorized description.
Meaning or interpretation is an open matter for the reader to
negotiate.
Plot is, of course, a critical component of narrative. It
provides one of the ways that narrative organizes human ex-
perience in meaningful form. Plot is the ordering of individual
events in a given spatial and temporal setting so that events
become related to the unified whole of the story. Plot allows a
storyteller to assign significance to various events along a
continuum leading to the story's outcome. Thus, as you can
see, plot occurs in the realm of meaning rather that the realm
of objects.
Plot does not spring into the storyteller's mind fully
formed, established, and ready for narrative purposes. Instead,
the reasoning that develops plot is iterative and accretionary,
much like hypothesis formation and testing in research. The
storyteller tries out possible meanings and interpretations on
the events in the narrative. Plots emerge as actions in a given
space-time configuration performed by agents with certain
motives or goals. In fact, we often appeal to plot to explain
events or actions. In doing so, we place the actions or events
in a story and see how they make sense in, or are significant
to, its outcome. What something means in the context of the
story guides the explanation.
This form of event explanation in lived experience based
on narrative differs radically from scientific or logical expla-
nation. The latter proceeds by establishing whether an event
or action conforms to a preordained criterion or scientific law
158 Critical Art Pedagogy

regardless of its meaning within a narrative context. In

scientific explanation, an action or event relates to all other
actions or events in the category referenced by the particular
law but not to actions or events in lived experience. Narrative
explanation, by contrast, constructs a whole story in which
the participation of an action or event is evaluated as mean-
ingful and significant in human terms. Not all plots appear
successful or sensible to everyone in the same way. Children,
for example, generally begin to learn the skills of plot making
and plot understanding at about age two (Polkinghorne,
1988). B y ten or so, they have usually gained enough mastery
to decide whether a plot is sensible.
Another important feature of narrative, one that serves
the vital function of providing the reader with a means to
create a personal virtual text, is character. A storyteller
establishes character most effectively for this purpose when
the story presents the accumulation of subjective experiences
as lived by persons depicted in the narrative. The accretionary
approach to narrative as the unfolding of its characters'
experiences provides a more compelling strategy for engaging
the reader in the formation of meaning than plot or the use of
an omniscient narrator who implicitly dictates a single inter-
pretation for the reader to understand or decode. In the
absence of fully developed character, plot amounts to a flow
chart-like sequence of discrete events, lacking the context of
personal experiences of particular individuals. In its most
effective form, character operates like a gestalt: readers
complete the pattern which the narrative suggests. Character,
then, functions best in narrative as an unbounded set of traits
which unfold over time rather than as an established,
completely delineated, unambiguous, set of personal charac-
teristics that function simply to account for plot actions. In
narrative psychology, character promotes active, engaged,
creative, meaning-making from multiple possibilities of inter-
pretation.
One particular property of character makes it important
in narrative psychology: it is subject to change depending on
circumstances. Jerome Bruner and his associate Henri Zukier
reported a study in which they gave their subjects two
successive lists of traits of an imaginary individual whom the
Psychologies for Critical A r t Pedagogy 159

subjects were then asked to characterize. After the initial

traits "religious," "introverted," and "spiritual," the subjects
typically identified the imaginary person as "saintly." But
when the second traits, "practical and "money-minded"
appeared, the subjects emended their description to "a good
person but in a cutthroat business."
Construing character, Bruner concluded, is the most
important process in interacting with other persons, whether
in fiction or in real life. Narrative psychology reminds us that
the process involves inherent subjectivity and active construc-
tion of meanings instead of the passive reception or down-
loading of discrete, simplified, name-like independent traits.
Knowing a person's character is knowing the optimal circum-
stances for that person.
Amelee Rorty (1976) distinguished between characters,
figures, persons, selves, and individuals. Each term represents a
different way of construing character in a fictional narrative
and, to the extent that narrative describes personal experi-
ence, in real life. As it appears in a fictional narrative like a
novel, character is a sketch or profile of traits and is not
intended as complete description. Nor is it limited to actions
compatible with an established, finite, set of traits. Anything
might happen.
Figures appear as idealized or stereotyped constellations of
traits to be imitated or avoided. Figures are conventions used
mostly in myths, folktales, fables, and religious or moralizing
narrative. Figures are assigned traits because of the proto-
typical roles they may play in the narrative. Figures are
subordinate to plot and action. Figures do not typically change
their natures as a result of experiences or circumstances.
According to Rorty, persons emerge from the choices they
make and how they relate to others in narrative. The matter
of responsibility—both moral and legal—enters the narrative
frame with the concept of person in the sense that their
choices affect others. Persons have souls and minds.
The self represents an extension of the concept of
person. Selves have the properties of persons but also have
rights and powers. A critical narrative psychology sees selves
as using or struggling to use their powers as instruments to
establish their rights in society. This means that the self can
160 Critical Art Pedagogy

determine external circumstances as well as be contingent

upon them.
Individuality is, in its turn, an extension of the self.
Individuality involves conscience and consciousness. The indi-
vidual is a self who transcends society's limitations, restric-
tions, and oppressive structures. In contrast to the prevailing
connotation of individuality as independence from conven-
tional social obligations, Rorty's concept of individuality is in
accord with many of the aims of critical pedagogy.
Each of these variations on depiction of character in
narrative presents an opportunity for the reader (or student or
teacher) to create meaning through the composition of a
virtual text. Each category presents a different slant, a
different meaning, or a different level of meaning.
Narrative psychology, and especially Rorty's work, is
congenial to the emancipatory goals of critical theory and
critical art pedagogy. Her concept of the individual as one
who actively pursues selfhood by opposing repressive social
forms corresponds to the search for justice through emancipa-
tory action that critical theory endorses. Narrative psychol-
ogy's tendency to emphasize social relatedness in such con-
ceptualizations as persons, selves, and individuals comple-
ments critical theory's advocacy of the social construction of
knowledge. In other words, the emphasis harmonizes with a
principal value of critical aesthetics, connectedness. Narrative
psychology and critical theory both disavow the radically
independent, autonomous human standing apart from others
and eager to promote a fixed personal destiny. Instead, the
individual which narrative psychology posits, actively engages
the world, finds a self definition in interaction with others, and
resists oppressive social forces to make sense of experience.
In his 1991 essay, "Culture Tales: A Narrative Approach
to Thinking, Cross-Cultural Psychology, and Psychotherapy,"
George S. Howard, a cognitive psychologist at Notre Dame,
distinguished scientific and logical storytelling from fictional,
literary and artistic storytelling. He noted that the former
include stories of causal relations that invite precise pre-
dictions about the objective world. The latter include stories
of people's lives from which one can infer meaning or sig-
Psychologies for Critical A r t Pedagogy 161

nificance. Both styles of narrative lead to the development of

a view of reality or truth.
Howard asserted that the latter style of narrative serves as
the more effective model for how we find meaning in our
lives. We experience meaning, he said, when we see ourselves
as actors or characters in a story. We, therefore, actively con-
struct or select identities according to properties and processes
which storytelling provides.
Persons construct life stories as identities selected for sig-
nificance in narrative contexts. Intellectual, moral, education-
al, and artistic growth and development require a continuation
of one's life story. It must be refined and elaborated in terms
of the possibilities for significance and meaning available in
the identities of characters in particular story contexts. The
main point is that art teachers and others can understand and
connect with students on the basis of their developing life
stories.
In his book N a r r a t i v e K n o w i n g a n d t h e H u m a n Sciences,
Donald Polkinghorne (1988), another scholar whose work in
narrative psychology addresses issues crucial to founding a
critical art pedagogy, outlined the primary tenets of his field.
One is that human mental life is organized and constructed in
the search for meaning in experience, and narrative is the
form which meaning in experience generally takes.
A second tenet is the rejection of the concept of a single,
irreducible, objective form of reality in favor of multiple
realities subsumed under three categories: the material realm,
the organic realm, and the mental realm. These three realms
of reality interact in certain ways to constitute human experi-
ence at both the individual and group levels. The material
realm is the physical world of matter and forces as described
by physics. The organic realm is where life forms exist and
function in the biological and physiological senses. The men-
tal realm is the site of thought, reflection, consciousness and
language. Experience in the mental realm is significant for
both individual and group. Language and other shared symbol
systems extend consciousness from the individual to the
group. From this process culture and meaning evolve. In other
words, narrative uses language and symbol to produce meaning
in the mental realm.
162 Critical Art Pedagogy

Polkinghorne's third tenet of narrative psychology is the

belief that meaning is an activity. A n activity is best thought
of as a set of procedures or operations rather than as an object
or product. Objects or products are the elements of con-
sciousness: merely the "things" one is aware of, not conscious-
ness itself. Meaning takes shape through a sequence of actions
or events that culminate in the establishment of relationships
among the elements of consciousness. These relationships
include identity, similarity or difference, instance, signifi-
cation, part, and causality. I d e n t i t y occurs when an object is
perceived as exactly the same object at different times or
places. S i m i l a r i t y (or difference) occurs when characteristics
of one object are determined to be like (or unlike) those of
another object. A n i n s t a n c e is a portion of a whole whose
appearance permits inference of the whole object. Polking-
horne used the example of a person's profile by which another
recognizes the person.
S i g n i f i c a t i o n is the use of one object, or a "sign," for
another. Polkinghorne saw signification playing a major role
in the construction of meaning, and he specified three types
of signification: A sign can be an icon, an index, or a symbol.
The meaning-bearing relationship is iconic i f the sign object
physically or perceptually resembles the referent object. A
passport photograph of a person is an example. A n index is
an indication of causal or sequential relations. Smoke, for
example, is an index of fire. In symbolic relationships, one
element stands for or implies another. The letters b, o, o and
k represent the object you are now reading and the sound that
has also come to signify that object. Yet neither the sound nor
the letters have any necessary physical correspondence to the
book as an object; the association has come about as a socially
constructed, mutually agreed-upon convention of language.
Note here that since association is arbitrary as opposed to
contingent on objective or evident physical properties, com-
munication concerning the nature of the relationship between
the symbol and its referent must occur for the symbol to be
understood and then become meaningful. This communication
may occur directly between persons or more tacitly in the
form of acculturated knowledge. It may be either clear or am-
biguous. It may be provisional or constant.
Psychologies for Critical A r t Pedagogy 163

Polkinghorne also elaborated on the relationships of p a r t

and cause, restricting his usage of these terms specifically to
actions and events that affect human affairs as opposed to the
physical world. He intended that his readers consider both
concepts in terms of their contributions to an episode or
sequence of events with beginning and end points. The mean-
ing of a part or a cause is then referenced to its role in the
sequence of events. For example, a part is a two-out single
with no one on base in the third inning of a baseball game. A
cause is a home run in the bottom of the tenth inning. As in
all other relationships which contribute to the formation of
meaning, it is the relationships among events and actions—as
opposed to objects and things—which are salient. Events and
outcomes affect occurrences in the context of human affairs
which are formed into meaning as they are configured into
episodes, stories or narratives.
Polkinghorne's review of the tenets of narrative psychol-
ogy included several observations about the study of meaning
in narrative psychology. Narrative psychological theory
stipulates that each person may access only his or her own
realm of meaning. Furthermore, the act of experiencing
meaning is self-reflective—that is to say, it involves personal
introspection. We can be aware of the products of meaning
formation, not the processes by which it occurs. A s a self-
reflective phenomenon, meaning is not self-evident; rather, it
receives expression more or less deliberately through words
and actions.
Moreover, since narrative meaning is language-laden, the
study of meaning involves examining how language is used and
how it functions in meaning formation. This type of inquiry
may be more interpretative or hermeneutic than scientific or
logical.
Still further, the realm of meaning operates at several
levels of consciousness, control, and precision. Since the
realm of meaning is part of the complex structure and
operation of human reality, it is subject to impingement from
diverse sources. Finally, meaning is not stored in a stable,
irreducible form. Instead, it is subject to change with the
arrival of new experiences and after self-reflection, remem-
brance, and other cognitive processes.
164 Critical Art Pedagogy

The relationship between the realm of meaning and

deliberate action in narrative psychology is obviously impor-
tant. We make conscious decisions about what or what not to
do in the context of meaning rather than purely as responses
to external stimuli, as behaviorists would have it. Although
interaction certainly occurs between a person's narrative
operations and external conditions, reflection or interpreta-
tion precedes deliberate action.
As to the formation of meaning, narrative psychologists
believe that humans operate more in accord with Occam's
Whiskers than Occam's Razor. The realm of meaning is an
open set. Innumerable possibilities exist for interpreting
experience. Thus, Polkinghorne and other narrative psychol-
ogists conceive of meaning-making as more like poetic or
artistic creation than like the linear thought processes that
lead to scientific knowledge or formal logic.

Discursive Psychology
Discursive psychology shares with narrative psychology and
architectonic psychology the post-positivist and post-beha-
viorist sensibility which focuses on mind and meaning rather
than on the reductionistic operationalization of observable
behaviors. Language, and particularly its cognitive aspects, is
central to both the narrative and discursive perspectives.
But discursive psychology and narrative psychology differ
in several ways. Narrative psychology views human experi-
ence as a story or verbal representation of sequenced events.
These events may be independent from agency—that is,
external to the individual. The question of agency is
secondary in narrative psychology. Discursive psychology, by
contrast, views the individual as an actor-agent who drives the
creation of narrative through the actions of discourse. As
agent, the individual engages in purposive communication
with others. The former psychology proposes a script-writing
model; the latter proposes one that resembles extempora-
neous acting.
Another difference between discursive and most other
systems of psychology, especially the traditional ones, is that
it declines to view discursive phenomena as outward manifesta-
tions of an individual's deeper psyche. Instead, discursive acts
Psychologies for Critical A r t Pedagogy 165

themselves a r e psychological phenomena: No dopelganger

dwells within the individual. No Cartesian duality exists there.
Discursive psychology addresses the mind as discourse reveals
it, not as an inaccessible entity hidden among invisible mental
structures.
Discursive psychology assigns priority to ordinary langu-
age in conceptualizing the mind of the learner. This emphasis
makes it immediately congenial to critical art pedagogy with
its implicit distrust of hierarchies of knowledge erected on the
obfuscatory jargons and cult locutions common to the aca-
demic trades. Ordinary language as communicators use it to
negotiate in the social context is discursive psychology's
lingua franca.
Discursive psychology sees the world in radically different
terms than positivist-behaviorist psychologies. Ontology, the
branch of philosophy which considers how the world is con-
stituted, describes the world by differentiating its contents in
terms of location. This means that we build our experience of
the world in part by establishing when and where something
exists. Ontology also describes the world by describing the
classes of entities in it. Then it describes how these entities
are related (Honderich, 1995).
Harré and Gillet (1994) detailed discursive psychology's
ontology and contrasted it with the ontological assumptions
of earlier psychologies. Positivist-behaviorist psychology is
founded on the traditional, mechanistic, Newtonian view of
the universe that undergirds science and old paradigm social
science. In the Newtonian ontology, entities comprising the
universe are located in space and time. Entities are distingui-
shable from one another if they occupy different spaces or
occur at different times: The Empire State Building is an indi-
vidual entity different from all other entities not located at
the corner of Fifth Avenue and 34th Street in New York City.
The Declaration of Independence was signed only on July 4,
1776. We should note that separate location and chronology
do not preclude commonalities among entities in the world.
These two examples indicate that Newtonian ontology
identifies objects and events as the basic entities which con-
stitute the world. In the Newtonian universe, the basic, most
significant relationship among entities and events is causality.
166 Critical Art Pedagogy

By contrast, the ontology of discursive psychology iden-

tifies groups of people (speakers) as basic reference points for
the location of entities in the world (Harré and Gillet, 1994).
Groups of people can be defined in multiple ways: politically,
socially, economically, racially, by gender, by age, in the past,
in the future, in the present, and so forth. Discursive psychol-
ogy recognizes that the context in which the act of speech
occurs is part of its nature.
In discursive ontology, the basic entity itself is the speech
act. The speech act expresses a speaker's intention, and
another speaker to whom it is addressed receives it as a poten-
tially meaningful utterance. Discursive psychology conceives
of speech as related to a speaker's actions rather than as an
outward expression of a nebulous inner state. This idea comes
to us from the philosopher John Langshaw Austin, who first
used the term "speech-act" in the William James Lectures he
presented at Harvard in 1955 (Honderich, 1995). Discursive
psychology identifies rules and story lines that govern speech
acts as the basic relationships among entities in the universe.
The rules and story lines are systematic sources of order and
structure which allow a speaker to comprehend and evaluate
another speaker's speech-acts.
Discursive psychologists refer to the appropriateness of a
speech act as "normative accountability." Normative account-
ability is essentially based on the relationship of a speech act
to other speech acts in a particular context with particular
persons. Speech acts must conform to certain criteria designed
to permit them to be interpreted as the speaker intends. The
criteria for normative accountability include rules for deciding
during discourse whether or not a speech act is appropriate.
Discursive psychology focuses on the task of explaining how
this decision is reached. These rules are recognized by speakers
as conventions—mutually accepted practices, not rigid sets of
all-or-none characteristics to be matched. Most important for
discursive psychology, the rules for normative accountability
should provide structure and influence human actions. The
rules are narrative conventions formed during discourse. A n in-
dividual first learns the practice of discourse, then the rules
which establish the normative accountability of particular dis-
course. The individual does not begin by internalizing the rules
Psychologies for Critical A r t Pedagogy 167

as general principles from which actions logically flow. The

rules are flexible in that they can accommodate several alter-
native meanings for a speech-act (Harre and Gillet, 1994).
A related assumption of discursive psychology is the
"indeterminacy principle," which holds that everything in
public or private discourse is inherently ambiguous. In human
affairs, groups of speakers may agree to assign determinacy—
that is, causality—to certain acts as conventions, but doing so
remains a context-based mutual agreement.
Another important concept in discursive psychology is
the position, or relative status, of the speaker. First intro-
duced by feminist philosophers, "position" refers to the
privileges and responsibilities perceived to belong to a speaker
associated with a discernible group of people. The premise is
that members of different groups conduct discourses in dif-
ferent ways. For example, adults tend to speak differently to
children than to other adults. Gender differences also tend to
be associated with the position of the speaker.
The relationship between thinking as it is ordinarily under-
stood and thinking as it is pictured by scientific inquiry on
cognition is of great interest to discursive psychology and, by
extension, to critical pedagogy. In discursive psychology,
thoughts and cognitive processes are not equivalent. Thinking
is not regarded as simply one of several cognitive processes
like recall and problem-solving. Instead, thoughts are common
mental phenomena which ordinary language can inquire about,
access, describe, and express. Certain properties situate
thoughts in discourse, making them relevant and making the
understanding of the self and others possible. These properties
include (1) intentionality, (2) the capacity to explain be-
havior, (3) orientation toward truth and appropriateness, (4)
capacity for expression via syntactic devices, and (5) the
availability of options for private or public expression.
I n t e n t i o n a l i t y of t h o u g h t simply means that thoughts have
an object. They are a b o u t this or that object, which may be
tangible or intangible, real or imagined, but which is in some
way understandable to the thinker. According to discursive psy-
chology, what a thought is a b o u t is the words or signs or
images that make up the thought and which the thinker uses
to express it in discourse. Thoughts are not formed by r e a d i n g
168 Critical Art Pedagogy

the real world. To understand and express a thought, one must

be able to form and use the signs, words and images that
signify what the thought is about. One must understand the
qualities or properties or entities to which the components of
the thought refer (Harré and Gillet, 1994).
We can illustrate the property of thought one can use to
explain behavior by comparing a person using a deck of cards
to play solitaire to someone holding a deck of cards who has
never seen cards before. The person playing solitaire has a
concept of what the cards are for and how to use them to
play. The latter person has no idea, literally, what they are or
what to do with them. A n object encountered has at most
only incomplete significance until thought illuminates it. Until
it is situated in a discourse in which the object takes on mean-
ing—after someone specifies behaviors for its appropriate use,
perception, or application—the object is inchoate.
This property which discursive psychology attributes to
thought has particular significance for the art world's lingering
debate about the issue of whether aesthetic value is self-
evident or inherent in the art object. According to the dis-
cursive perspective, both the art object and aesthetic value
must be situated in a discourse to be meaningfully recognized
or defined. Discursive psychology's doctrine of intentionality
provides critical art pedagogy the theoretical purchase for
levering away the legacies of such positivist-based educational
practices as uncritical memorization of an art object's au-
thorized iconic meanings and aesthetic values as templates or
prescriptions for an individual's aesthetic experiences.
The key to understanding how t r u t h functions as a proper-
ty of thought is to realize that truth is a norm, a convention
arising from discourse, and a mutually agreed-upon meaning
constructed within the context of social interaction. It is a
publicly consensual meaning. This understanding opposes the
traditional presumption that the mind is an internal entity
totally separated from the external world. The separationist
assumption necessarily presupposes that the mind can contain
only what sensory apparatus bring to it. Harré and Gillet
(1994) adduced Hacker's term "veil of perception," behind
which the mind is virtually entrapped, hidden from the real
world "out there." Taken to its logical extreme, i f the mind-
Psychologies for Critical A r t Pedagogy 169

world separation were true, individuals simply could not com-

municate. They would have only their own separate internal
reference points. One would never know what the other was
talking about in discourse.
While discursive psychology declines the idea of the veil
of perception, it accepts the need for a concept of public, con-
sensual truth as a p p r o p r i a t e n e s s or normative accountability.
In other words, thoughts must be tempered by the attempt to
orient them to what the thinker knows or believes to be true
about the world. This tempering encourages connected dis-
course and permits the use of consensually meaningful signs as
required for the occurrence of mutual understanding. Without
it, thought would be completely idiosyncratic, unreferenced,
and therefore incommunicable. To engage in discourse through
the use of such signs as words, sounds, and images, we must
have some regard for consistency in regard to what these signs
signify.
The communicability of thought concerns the linguistic
relation between thinking and symbols we call syntax. From
the perspective of discourse psychology, language is essential-
ly a shared, organized symbol system. Discursive psychology
also accepts Vygotsky's (1962) idea that the relationship
between language and thought is more than merely unilateral
with language or other types of symbols functioning as a
medium through which one expresses thoughts. Language
additionally functions to "shape" thought. To enter the
domain of developmental psychology by way of example, a
child learns about the world by mastering the rules of the
symbol system by which the world is signified. Similarly, the
thinker can form an understanding of the world by under-
standing the functioning of the system of signs which refer to
the world's properties and characteristics.
Another important property of thought discerned by
discursive psychology is its p u b l i c or p r i v a t e nature. The ca-
pacity to conceal thoughts poses a difficulty for discursive
psychology's claim that thought and language are linked in
fundamental and essential ways. It seems more appropriate to
say that speakers develop the capacity to keep some thoughts
silent. Paradoxically, thoughts can become private as a
thinker masters language, the system of rules for expressing
170 Critical Art Pedagogy

thoughts. The process of opting for privacy involves actively

substituting other signs for thoughts which one would use to ex-
press them publicly. Rather than the complete lack of
expression, private thinking is really an active form of expres-
sion. A n example is the poker face, the stoic appearance of
calm contrived with great effort and skill by a card player
wishing to conceal a good hand. A n apparent meaning (calm)
is intentionally expressed. The fact that the public appearance
displayed by the thinker fails to match privately held
meanings hardly negates the essential link between language
and thought.
Harré and Gillet (1994) provided an example that under-
scores the importance of discursive context as the key ele-
ment missing from traditional cognitive psychology's models
of human mental activity. They recalled the philosopher
Wittgenstein's question regarding the recognition of portraits.
One may recognize a certain picture as a portrait of a person
with whom one is acquainted, or one may simply recognize
the portrait as an individual's face having certain features.
The brain may process the visual stimuli each picture provides
in similar fashion, but the mind regards each picture quite
differently. We can account for the difference by considering
the discursive context—that is, familiarity, knowledge, mean-
ings, and experiences in the life of the subject which include
shared signs, symbols, and methods for using them to shape,
and to be shaped by, meaningful communication with others.
A n often replicated finding from traditional experimental
psychology parallels this point. In numerous studies of short-
term memory tasks like those of Saffran and Marin (1975),
subjects remembered words comprising meaningful sentences
with much greater accuracy and in far greater quantity than
they remembered unstructured word lists or nonsense syllables.
It seems obvious that the concept of meaning as the pro-
duct of discourse should take a leading role in how we portray
the minds of learners in critical art pedagogy. Yet recall that
in the intellectual climate recently fraught with positivist and
behaviorist influences, such an assertion would have attracted
scorn and ridicule.
Discursive psychology ventures even further from the
positions earlier schools of psychology promulgated. Harre
Psychologies for Critical A r t Pedagogy 171

and Gillet (1994) used the term "custom-made" to describe

the model of the relationship between brain, mind and dis-
course. They meant that social discourse or interaction actu-
ally shape the structures and networks of the brain. This
assertion definitely challenges the scientific "common-sense"
view that the brain is a stimulus-processing mechanism or a
"response producer" with stable neurophysiological structures
which generally direct the affairs of its owner. The idea that
discourse determines or shapes the brain should, however, be
no more surprising than the belief that weightlifting increases
muscle size. The idea is that the brain is malleable—
responsive to experience. In the course of experience, it
develops structures instrumental to discourse. These brain
structures, originating, in turn, from the structures of dis-
cursive experience, provide skills or knowledge or faculties for
use in similar discursive contexts later.
Like the brain, the self has been an important focus in all
systems of psychological thought, and discursive psychology
also addresses the constructs of self and personality. The con-
cepts of freedom and agency are central to the discursive self.
A person experiences freedom in the process of situating or
locating himself or herself in a discursive context. The
personality, like the brain, is built in discourse—that is,
through active involvement which includes taking up certain
positions and resisting others. Since these positionings are
subject to change, discursive psychology hesitates to posit self
and personality as stable entities.
Positivism influenced the construction of a psychology
patterned after the physical sciences, which seek to establish
laws based on observations of causal relationships. Harré and
Gillet used the term "billiard ball causality" to characterize
this notion. Positivist forms of psychology like behaviorism
jettisoned such concepts as action, conduct, character, reflec-
tion, intuition and valuing, and replaced them with a unilateral
investment in the sole criterion of observable behavior as the
only admissible evidence of psychological phenomena. Any
entity can exhibit behavior, even machines or chemicals; thus,
behaviorism implicitly regards humans as objects. The goal of
behavioral psychology was and remains to predict behavior.
Discursive psychology instead focuses on the primary task of
172 Critical Art Pedagogy

understanding individuals with reference to such concepts as

freedom, agency and personality. These concepts are the
building blocks of the foundation which discursive psychology
helps build for critical arts pedagogy.
As humans interact in the world, they use signs, and as
they use particular signs, certain significations or meanings
accrue. We might regard education, for example, as training in
sign usage. As an association between a sign and a signification
gains wider acceptance in a discourse, norms are established.
These norms, in turn, function to make understanding signs
and significations possible for individuals within a discourse.
Norms fund ways of regarding, or perceiving, or thinking, or
taking action, or evaluating the appropriateness of action
within a particular context or discursive framework. The
internalization of norms or gaining skill at signifying (using
signs to form meanings) involves a certain level of con-
formity or commitment to norms. This commitment—while
not absolute, rigid, or irrevocable—leads to participation in
the overall discourse.
Against this social-semiotic background, discursive psychol-
ogy repudiates traditional psychology's stimulus control theo-
ries and replaces them with the theory of agency. Stimulus
control theory sees human beings as machines whose behavi-
ors are controlled by external forces, stimuli, or organisms.
Discursive agency offers instead a model of the person as able
to act intentionally, to confer meaning, and thereby to play
an active role in constructing his or her own psychological
makeup. In the view of discursive psychology, the subject-
agent comes to accept norms which allow for self-exami-
nations of one's own actions. We can call these norms
"prescriptions," or "validations," or simply "rules." They
allow a person to determine what ought to be.
These rules, of course, strongly influence how people con-
struct their relations to the discourses in which they are
engaged. To understand discursive psychology's idea of agen-
cy, one must first understand that these rules are not external
stimuli impinging on an inert, mechanical person-system.
Instead, discursive validation issues from one source, the
person. The person actively adopts them intentionally,
committing to both the actions they entail and the criteria by
Psychologies for Critical A r t Pedagogy 173

which the appropriateness of the actions will be evaluated. In

discursive psychology, rules are not externally imposed man-
dates; instead, they are self-instituted constructions which
predispose the person to act, to think, or to use significations
(meanings) in certain ways. They are neither compulsory nor
causal. They are affirmative in that they provide both the
structure for action or signification and the structure for
grounding that action or signification in a context of meaning.
Thus, they allow the agent to assess the reasonableness of
given actions or meanings. Rules go hand in hand with the idea
of agency because they allow the person to determine or
predict those actions likely to be most effective in the
discursive context where the agent is situated. Rules represent
predicted patterns of discursive engagement which both
structure and affirm action and meaning.
As Harré and Gillet observed, this conception of the dual
functions of rule-governed agency operates primarily in the
arena of the person's subjectivity. Discursive psychology
regards the agent as a subject rather than as an object
mechanically controlled by external forces, the position taken
by those psychologies driven by stimulus control theories.
Discursive psychology identifies a type of social causality
which differs from the mechanical, external forces positivist
psychologies like behaviorism feature. In fact, discursive
psychology should really replace the term "causality" because
of its Aristotelian and Newtonian connotations. No new term
has emerged, however, probably because of the tendency of
discursive psychology to forgo the creation of a specialized
vocabulary in favor of ordinary language. The Latin word
"nexus" offers possibilities: N e c t ( e r e ) means to join, link, or
bind.
"Discursive causality" refers to action deliberately taken
by a subject-agent in order to link a sign and a signification
within a discursive context. As people learn how to use signs
(producing, receiving, and interpreting them), associations
evolve to form significations or meanings. These significa-
tions resemble responses or effects which result from a
person's use of a sign, either proposing it as a communication
or receiving and interpreting it. In discursive psychology,
however, this similarity is less striking because of the nature
174 Critical Art Pedagogy

of agency and intentional action. Agents intentionally use

signs to form significations in discourse. The discursive
linkage, whether we call it "nexus" or " c a u s a l i t y " is between
sign and signification. Further, a subject-agent forges it inten-
tionally. Some significations so formed are validated, perhaps
consistently enough over time that patterns of sign-signifi-
cation linkage form. But despite the formation of such
patterns, their initiation in each new discourse remains the
prerogative of the subject-agent who has at his or her disposal
a variety of possibilities for action and a set of normative
rules by which to consider them.
In discursive psychology, such concepts as causation, rules
and self must ultimately have significant implications for the
question of freedom, the most important link between discur-
sive psychology and critical arts pedagogy. In any form of
radical pedagogy, liberation is the ultimate objective.
Meanwhile, the concept of positioning influences the
concept of freedom in discursive theory. Positionings are the
selected predispositions or courses of action, attitudes and
commitments to ways of thinking a person assumes in dis-
course. Positionings can also change in new and different
discursive contexts. A variety of positionings is available to
individuals to the extent that they make sense in a given
discursive context. For example, if a person perceives himself
or herself open to a violent attack, certain actions like shout-
ing, fighting or running away cohere with that perception
while others do not. Validations are the consequences of, or
reactions to, a person's positionings.
Discourses often become sites of conflict in which dif-
ferent persons involved in the discourse take conflicting
positions. Likewise, conflicts emerge when the discourse pre-
sents dissonant significations. Discursive psychology accepts
the premises that people try to make sense of their affairs and
that they do so by forming conceptualizations of the signs and
significations present in the discourses in which they engage.
Accordingly, the ability of an individual to adapt to or to
balance conflicting meanings is a discursive skill highly perti-
nent to such considerations as character, educational growth,
morality and interpersonal relations. Individuals who tend to
remain committed to rigid positionings and to construe depar-
Psychologies for Critical A r t Pedagogy 175

tures from them as threatening will be less successful agents in

discourse. Persons who develop skills to adapt and balance
conflicting meanings incorporate more possibilities into their
lives and embody discursive psychology's idea of freedom.
Discursive psychology's perspective on freedom offers
critical pedagogy an important foundation in all subject areas,
especially art, because it parallels critical theory's call to iden-
tify, reveal, and resist the effects of unbalanced power
relations. In discursive psychology, freedom occurs as an ac-
tion taken, not as an abstraction. The discursive subject-agent
must identify conflicting significations and resist those which
might limit discursive action. Resistance is, of course,
necessary for discursive freedom, but it is insufficient by itself.
The successful discursive subject-agent must negotiate within
discourse and affirm new positionings in order to replace
rejected significations.
Critical pedagogy's tasks are to facilitate resistance, to en-
courage the affirmation of new significations, and to promote
the individual's awareness of conflicting or dissonant signifi-
cations in given contexts. Critical pedagogy then illuminates
the array of possible alternatives in order to find meaning and
sensibility. In this regard, discursive psychology offers an
optimistic grace note to critical art pedagogy's theoretical
foundations. The ability to experience freedom depends on
identifying problematic meanings, resisting them, and com-
mitting to or affirming new, more meaningful positionings in
the discursive context.
As Harré and Gillet (1994) observed, traditional psychol-
ogies explain individual differences or personal uniqueness by
operationally defining personality in terms of a profile, or
constellation, of inner traits or internal mechanisms which
determine external behavior. This explanation suffers the
limitations typical of deterministic psychologies and follows
questionable logic in attempting to explain uniqueness with a
finite subset of traits. In fact, most personality tests identify
30 traits or fewer. Imagine trying to apply a general principle
to a particular instance to prove that it is, in fact, a particular
instance. Discursive psychology addresses the issue of individu-
ality or uniqueness without appealing to deterministic inner
mechanisms or the tautology just described. Discursive psy-
176 Critical Art Pedagogy

chology sees the individual as unique because he or she exists

at an intersection of particular discourses consisting of on-
going interpersonal relationships. These discourses are where
the mind forms and continues to operate in the present.
To be sure, discursive psychology addresses many of the
same issues addressed by traditional psychologies, including
emotion, perception, intentionality and consciousness. With
regard to the e m o t i o n s , discursive psychology rejects the tradi-
tional approach which views them as abstract phenomena or
as physiological sensations felt in response to external stimuli.
Instead, discursive psychology approaches emotion by
inquiring into the functions emotions serve in the everyday
lived experience of subject-agents, and by inquiring into how
the expression of an emotion communicates meaning.
Accordingly, the meaning of an emotion depends to some
degree on the context in which it occurs. In a theater, for
example, one may suspend or experience fear vicariously.
Conversely, fear may assume a radically different presence in
the real-life experience of being an armed robbery victim.
Emotions qualify as discursive acts in the social context: They
are signs which can express judgments and meaning. But
despite these discursive functions, discursive psychology
acknowledges the many significant biological and cultural
influences on emotions. Like thought processes, emotions
may undergo assessments of their appropriateness and ration-
ality. Studies of emotions from the discursive perspective
would focus on the words used to identify and express
emotion. Additionally, detailed interviews with subjects would
identify and assess the influence of the personal and cultural
meaning they had experienced at a given time and place.
Discursive psychology's focus on the functions of emo-
tions in the discursive context and the words or signs used to
indicate them can provide the critical art educator with
valuable insight. One can recognize, legitimate, and address
the individual emotional components of students' aesthetic
experiences in the discursive framework. The discursive per-
spective on emotion provides a platform for discussing the
narrative content of many works of art, including those of
both the archive and the classroom. Most observers acknowl-
edge strong associations among art, aesthetics, and emotions.
Psychologies for Critical A r t Pedagogy 177

P e r c e p t i o n , like emotion, is an important domain of the

human psyche which almost all systems of psychological
thought address. For psychologists, the task is to formulate
plausible explanations for the role of human sensory appara-
tus in the formation of understandings about the external
world. Discursive psychology accepts the principle that the
mind brings order to experience, including sensory percep-
tions. Accordingly, discursive psychology is sympathetic to
the view of Gestalt psychology that perception is an active,
dynamic process whereby individuals use contextual informa-
tion as well as sensory information about physical charac-
teristics of objects in the environment to form knowledge or
make sense.
Contextual clues complete or refine sensory perception. A
person continually explores sensory stimuli from the environ-
ment and shapes anticipations, which also inform and further
refine new perceptions. Discursive psychology extends these
basically cognitive and Gestalt ideas about perception by
conceptualizing them as dynamic processes situated in dis-
course. The processes of perception include context clues in
the form of meanings, significations, and positionings framed
in discourse.
A body of research on pattern recognition in which per-
sons assign meaning to visual stimuli suggests the discursive
dimension of perception. Inquiries into the construct of
semantic priming have revealed that perceptual performance
on tasks involving recognition of a particular stimulus is
influenced by prior exposure to a stimulus with a similar
meaning (Harré and Gillet, 1994). Similar findings have
emerged from educational research on advance organizers.
Above all, discursive psychology supports the linkage between
perception and the processes of intentionally creating
meaning or knowledge through interactions with the world.
The concepts of i n t e n t i o n a l i t y and consciousness are also
important components of human experience which both the
traditional approaches and discursive psychology address.
Psychologists and philosophers (for example, Brentano,
1929) speak of the "intentional objects of consciousness," the
events, entities, perceivable conditions and ideas in the im-
mediate environment, including internal mental phenomena,
178 Critical Art Pedagogy

to which a conscious person attends. But from the perspective

of discursive psychology, consciousness is more than just
sensory data provided by objects in the environment. Harré
and Gillet tell of children touring the Louvre who wondered
why so many people crowded around an old picture of a wo-
man with an odd smile. In other words, meanings and values,
especially aesthetic meanings and values, are not always self-
evident.
The functioning of sensory or perceptual apparatus are
only part of the consciousness issue. The children in the
Louvre, of course, had the physical ability to see every detail
in the M o n a L i s a . With respect to consciousness, prior experi-
ence in relevant discourses is instrumental in forming the
content of consciousness. Prior experience is discursive skill-
building. Intentional focus on meaningful perception depends
to a great extent on significations that make available to the
consciousness the possible range of meanings. In fact, we can
think of education as consciousness expansion by exposure to
new significations and discursive skills that, in turn, extend the
personal range of possible meanings applicable to a given
situation.
Discursive psychology has important implications for
critical art pedagogy. Discursive psychology incorporates a
concept important to both traditional cognitive psychology
and critical constructivism: the idea that the individual forms
a mental representation or interpretation of lived experience
in the world. These interpretations, rather than the objective
physical world " o u t t h e r e " guide the formation of an
individual's actions, beliefs and meanings. These interpreta-
tions and representations build meaning in a person's life as
they serve as bases for action and beliefs in lived experience.
Meaning is neither downloaded from the objective world, nor
is it determined by how accurately the person's interpre-
tations correspond to the objective world. To borrow the
terms of traditional psychologies, we can best understand the
mind of the learner not by inquiring about the nature of the
stimulus, but rather by understanding how the learner
construed or perceived or interpreted that stimulus. In critical
art pedagogy, this refocusing can encourage the teacher to
approach a learner as a subject-agent rather than as an inert,
Psychologies for Critical A r t Pedagogy 179

mechanistic object with behavior determined by external

stimuli.
To understand the art student as an art learner, the critical
art instructor must engage that learner in discourse so as to
identify the meanings and emotions which develop in his or
her experiences with art. The process must include resisting
the limiting, constricting forms of significations attributable
to inflexible positionings or absolute relations among signs and
their significations. In critical art pedagogy, the discourse is a
dynamic site where learner and teacher negotiate alternative
positionings to establish the student's unique place in the
discourse of the art world. The student creates and occupies
this space and, as a subject-agent, engages art by actively
formulating aesthetic experience, meaning and value rather
than downloading canned opinions as significations. Similarly,
in producing art, students must avoid stereotyped solutions or
conventions contrived to ensure the reproduction of safe
variations of mainstream art objects approved because of their
resemblance to archival forms.
Chapter Four

Creating Dangerous Knowledge:

Semiotics, Deconstruction, and Qualitative
Methodology

Research Styles for Critical Arts Pedagogy

Critical art pedagogy conveys a strong skepticism of the of-
ficial knowledge authorized methods produce. The hierarchical
demands of official knowledge generally preclude new forms of
knowledge that marginalized methods and styles of inquiry
might produce. In traditional instructional systems funded by
positivism, educators must appeal to knowledge produced by
authorized methodologies, primarily the scientific method, in
order to certify instructional content, format and practices.
From the perspective of postmodern epistemologies, how-
ever, advocates of critical pedagogy recognize the sense of
certainty surrounding the authorized methods as a chimera
produced by the misapplication of scientific methods to the
complexities of human experience. This aura of certitude dis-
courages adventurous forms of inquiry likelier to address those
moral and normative questions so central to human experi-
ence.
The borders of positivist methodologies are distinct, and
they strictly delimit those questions researchers can pursue,
and the steps they must follow. Moreover, positivist research
methods strictly specify who is eligible to conduct research—
that is to say, those with the rights to produce knowledge.
One need not be a cynic to observe that positivist systems of
education generally exclude teachers from the shaman-like
status o f researcher. Teachers are more often subjects of
research than participants. Moreover, an obfuscatory, arcane,
official jargon effectively controls accessibility to research
methodologies and results.
182 Critical Art Pedagogy

Other tacit defenses built into positivist research methodo-

logies preserve a hierarchy topped by assorted specialists,
experts, supervisors, administrators, professors, and other
devotees of the cult of positivism, all of them far removed
from the fray where their lumpen-subjects actually teach,
learn and make art. This cult, enthralled by quantitative data,
thrives on the perpetuation of the theory-practice dichotomy
while their "subjects"—teachers, parents, students and those
others recruited as respondents in quantitative research—
remain passive participants. Meanwhile, accumulating reports
suggest that subjects have been duped, mislead, or left unin-
formed about the nature of the research so as to preserve its
"objectivity."
Another structure in positivist research functions to ex-
clude teachers, students, and others from research privileges
and participation in official knowledge making: the imbricate
quantitative methods themselves composed mainly of des-
criptive and inferential statistics. Campbell and Stanley
(1966) described the lock-step procedures for hypothesis
testing and inference, and the various designs for experiments
and quasi-experiments, and virtually all graduate education
programs now use a host of expensive textbooks designed
especially for the obligatory Applied Statistics and Research
Methods course.
But an interesting and ironic development has appeared in
quantitative research lately that may actually increase access
to the positivist arcana for teachers, students, parents and
others. From the early days of cybernetics until just recently,
the computer has been the engine driving the rampant expan-
sion of quantitative research in education and the social
sciences. (It is really more accurate to identify the many
statistical analysis software programs as the "engine.") From
their inception, computers and their statistical analysis pro-
grams clearly constituted a major defense of the quantitative
researcher's status and helped keep teachers, students and
others out of the official knowledge making. The daunting
expense of the statistical software accounts for a lot of this de
f a c t o exclusion. A second reason is that until recently, the
programs required mainframe computers, which of course, are
very large and very expensive. The rank and file could seldom
Semiotics, Deconstruction, and Qualitative M e t h o d o l o g y 183

afford access to these machines even if they somehow

managed to understand the principles and techniques of statis-
tical analysis and hypothesis testing.
But the profusion of the affordable personal computer has
set this process in reverse. Small but powerful computers are
now standard items in classrooms and homes, and statistical
analysis software as powerful and sophisticated as the earlier
mainframe versions is widely available, relatively inexpensive,
and is more or less easy to use. Many teachers now routinely
use spreadsheets, perform analyses of variance, correlations
and other types of data analysis. This development has pro-
duced the perhaps unintended—but nevertheless beneficial—
effects of increasing teachers' participation in knowledge
production while also raising their awareness of troubling
questions about how hierarchies have limited the authority of
teachers and students to conduct research and generate knowl-
edge.
A second irony attends this issue. As the once complex
and difficult quantitative methods have become more widely
accessible to teachers, students, and others in education, the
quantitative paradigm has begun to lose its epistemological
charter as the official arbiter of truth and status. As teachers
come to understand their profession as including the right—
even the obligation—to make living knowledge, they become
bold enough to question the authority of the quantitative para-
digm as the exclusive knowledge-production methodology.
Quantitative methodologies can still produce valuable in-
formation and help us solve certain types of problems in
certain contexts. They cannot, however, offer the richness of
understanding other styles of research offer. If the term
"methodology" can refer to a fuzzy set of meanings con-
noting a broad range of ways to produce a variety of types of
knowledge, it is a useful word for the present purposes. But the
term "research style" works better in critical art pedagogy.
"Research style" reflects less a zeal for conformity to
postmodern-speak than an eagerness to acknowledge and un-
derscore the idea that knowledge useful to teachers, students,
and others can emerge from a variety of sources and by
diverse means. Many of these sources and means bear little
resemblance to the formal prescriptions that characterize
184 Critical Art Pedagogy

positivist research methods, yet they can still enrich our pro-
fessional understanding and practice.
This "style of research" terminology connotes a
deliberately considered conglomeration of characteristics that
operates like a family-resemblance category. No single charac-
teristic is absolutely requisite for membership; but each mem-
ber possesses several features that resemble the features of
other members. Stylistic characteristics cluster in more or less
consistent ways, but, as in art, they freely vary and assume
novel configurations.
In critical art pedagogy, we think of research styles as per-
spectives leading to knowledge formation. As the plural form
suggests, critical art pedagogy promises to rely on a multi-
plicity of research styles intended to be interactively deployed
by individuals engaged in the pursuit of dangerous knowledge
through art and about art. As the art world admits a multi-
plicity of art styles, the conjunction between it and critical
pedagogy must admit a multiplicity of knowledge styles.
Critical art pedagogy also guards against the threat that one
research style will become a meta-style or grand method. Each
style of research may be enacted in a different way in dif-
ferent contexts.
"Style of research" is also an apt term in critical arts
pedagogy also because its open-endedness is analogous to the
open-endedness of art styles. Style in art is, of course, a
construct that assumes different meanings at different times.
But in general, it operates in an open-ended way, which means
that resemblance to the familiar and the possibility of the
novel coexist and mutually define one another. Stylistic resem-
blance among art works changes as new works are produced.
Styles merge, emerge, and become passe.
We would probably prefer this "research style" phrasing i f
only because it implies agency for participants in the art
education setting. Styles of both art production and knowledge
production amount to perspectives or tendencies toward ac-
tion or dialogue instead of prescribed steps to follow. Style
implies engagement in processes of making or becoming or
happening.
Finally, in critical art pedagogy, the research methodology
and teaching methodology domains interact. Research is an
Semiotics, Deconstruction, and Qualitative M e t h o d o l o g y 185

act of knowledge making, and so is teaching. A distinct demar-

cation between the two fails to serve the interest of critical
art pedagogy. In fact, integrating the two is a primary goal.
The idea of teachers as researchers and researchers as teachers
is not merely a cleaver metaphor for indicating the recipro-
city of certain shared aspects of teaching and research or
challenging the discredited theory-practice dichotomy. The
idea deliberately blurs the borderlines because at least in
critical art pedagogy, the ends of each domain are identical—
that is, the development of dangerous knowledge that inspires
critical consciousness and emancipatory action.
Teaching equates with research (and vice versa) insofar as
it accomplishes the process of emancipatory revelation. B y
accepting the instructional challenge of making students' life
worlds the substance of education, the teacher-researcher
creates knowledge, even new forms of knowledge. Traditional
epistemologies based on the myth of objectivity tend to reify
knowledge into a static entity that claims a universal exis-
tence "out there," a view that depersonalizes teaching and
research by separating the knower from the known and values
from facts. B y analogy, naive formalism separates the artist
from art. Acceptance of the concept of teachers as research-
ers legitimizes a knowledge considered unorthodox because it
originates from outside the objectivist tradition. New forms of
knowledge might include the epistemologies of non-white,
non-Western, indigenous people. New knowledge also includes
feminism's passionate knowledge, and such related concepts as
Polanyi's (1958) personal knowledge, McLaren's (1989) felt
knowledge, and Giroux's (1988) dangerous knowledge. These
ways of knowing underscore the grounding of educational
knowledge and research in the lived experience of the learner,
especially the learner's values and beliefs.
As we have seen, the myth of objectivity spawned a
hierarchy that awards privilege to educational researchers and
disenfranchises teachers. One purpose for fostering ambiguous
distinctions between teaching and research is to open
education to new epistemologies that remove the expert as a
superior source of top-down knowledge for the teaching-learn-
ing setting. Instead, the teacher becomes an agent of learning
186 Critical A r t Pedagogy

in the process of knowledge production, not a passive delivery

system for static knowledge.
Dismantling the demarcations between teaching and re-
search as actions and methods suggests powerful implications
for art education and the teaching profession as a whole. In
his 1991 book, Teachers as Researchers: Qualitative Inquiry
as a P a t h t o E m p o w e r m e n t , Joe Kincheloe listed ideas and
concepts that support the idea of teachers as researchers, and
he thereby anchored the concept of teacher as researcher in
the perspectives of critical theory.
Kincheloe urged a rejection of the view that teaching is a
deskilled process for purveying static knowledge designed by
remote, higher authorities, a position with direct implications
for a critical art pedagogy. The deskilling of instruction raises
particular concerns in traditional forms of art education
oriented more to art as product than as process. Instruction
too often devolves into mere demonstrations of techniques or
processes for students to complete. The outcome is often an
art object regarded as a commodity independent from the
artist who made it and the context in which he or she
produced it. In fact, traditional art education systems measure
the art object and its formal properties against rigid standards
established outside the learning process and usually based on
experts' opinions of how an art object ought to be experi-
enced, what it really means, and what its true value is.
Classroom regurgitations of this counterfeit art knowledge
amount to little more than a mindless parroting that mas-
querades as perspicacity or precocious talent. Slogans become
indices of learning. Deskilled forms of art instruction force
students to display expressions without engaging deeply with
art or aesthetic experience. These expressions may superfici-
ally match the canned knowledge, but under critical scrutiny,
they may amount to signs of conformity or social advance-
ment skills. Subsere passes for primeval forest. Traditional art
instruction becomes deskilled by its own narrow focus on
transmitting the ability to repeat slogans. Traditional art
instruction's reliance on naive formalism and art-as-product
premises discourages a wider, sharper focus. When art instruc-
tion persists uncritically in purveying such spurious learning, it
Semiotics, Deconstruction, and Qualitative M e t h o d o l o g y 187

becomes meretricious and perpetuates the colonization of the

students' art worlds.
As an alternative, critical art pedagogy shifts the focus to
process-oriented outcomes and engagement in art learning
that lead students to personal creative discoveries, building
their own art worlds as integral parts of their life worlds.
Our teachers-as-researchers concept also encourages
teachers to elaborate their roles and become producers of
knowledge as well as conduits of instruction. We thus expand
our idea of research to acknowledge the legitimacy of such
qualitative forms of knowledge making as critical action
research and historical, philosophical and interpretative re-
search methods. Kincheloe's description of the research
process reveals a strong commitment to the qualitative
paradigm and its potential for change in education. Qualitative
research, after all, takes as its subject the lived experience of
participants in schooling. A teacher-researcher's data are
dangerous memories. Teaching and research together compel
one to construct knowledge out of life histories and to un-
cover those historical forces that have shaped schools. These
forms of data—and learning outcomes—threaten the power
elite by revealing its presence to those whom schools have
oppressed. One goal of the teachers-as-researchers movement
is to reveal and resist those ideological influences that produce
negative consequences. Another goal is empowering teachers
to become knowledge-makers instead of talking-head pur-
veyors of facts.
As qualitative researchers, teachers produces important
thematic questions for critical art pedagogy. One thematic
question is How can I convey an understanding of the ways in
which the art experiences in school function to shape lived
experience? Another thematic question is How do art and the
art worlds of teachers and students shape school settings? Yet
another thematic question focuses on how schools communi-
cate to students certain options for relating to art and the art
world as agents engaged in art as praxis. Those interested in cri-
tical art pedagogy also concern themselves with the relation-
ships between art in schools and art experiences in non-school
settings—for example, the art worlds of the popular culture
and the contemporary art world of museums and galleries.
188 Critical A r t Pedagogy

The many research styles or perspectives we already have

can make important theoretical contributions to critical art
pedagogy, and new ones will surely emerge. In fact, the
project of developing theoretical foundations for a pedagogy
based on art as critical praxis should avoid an agenda aiming
for the stipulation of an itemized list of orthodox procedures
designed to work the same ways in all locales with all students
and teachers. Instead, teachers and students become the instru-
ments of critical art pedagogy, and they shape it in accord
with who they are and the contexts in which they work and
live. They continually enact and reenact their own versions of
critical art pedagogy. The research styles that inform critical
art pedagogy should offer dynamic approaches to exploring
art in the schools and in life as a process of producing
dangerous knowledge directed toward resistance and emanci-
pation. A s such, embracing a finite method of producing
absolute truth amounts to capitulation to educational philo-
sophies that limit critical knowledge and action. This chapter
surveys some, but not all, of the research styles that can con-
tribute to the theoretical foundations of critical art pedagogy.

Semiotics
The research style known as semiotics can certainly contri-
bute to this foundation for critical practice in art education.
Critical practice in education incorporates the postmodern
concept that education, like other academic disciplines, should
be described as a dialogue, as opposed to a set of rules
governing practice. This section reviews and explicates
selected important concepts of semiotics, locates its philo-
sophical and historical roots, and explores its implications for
critical art pedagogy.
The term "semiotics" derives from semeion, the Greek
word meaning "sign." Semiotics, then, is the study of signs—
namely, how we use them to communicate, and how they em-
body meaning in the culture. "Semiosis" is the set of pro-
cesses, operations, actions, and interplay of signs (Deeley,
1990). The awareness that signs, like implicit meanings, are
ubiquitous in our lives is fundamental to critical art pedagogy.
In a sense, an overriding concern in any critical pedagogy is
Semiotics, Deconstruction, and Qualitative Methodology 189

questioning the meaning of signs and interpreting those mean-

ings relative to individual lives.
Two important figures in the development of semiotics
were Charles Sanders Pierce, the American philosopher, and
Ferdinand de Saussure, a Swiss linguist and scholar. For
Saussure, who preferred the term "semiology," a sign has two
components, the signifier and the signified. The signifier can
be a word, a sound, an object, an image, or anything that can
represent to someone something other than itself. The
signified is a concept, an abstraction, that which is repre-
sented. The signifier and the signified are associated in an
arbitrary way entirely by socio-cultural convention. This
relationship is called "unmotivated"—that is to say, non-
causal and non-structural. The meaning of a concept, there-
fore, is relational instead of inherent in signs. Since the
relationship between the signifier and the signified is con-
structed by convention and is arbitrary, codes are often neces-
sary to interpret a sign's meaning (Berger, 1995).
Saussure identified the symbol as a particular type of sign
that is an exception to the arbitrary nature of the relation-
ship. The relationship between the symbol and the symbolized
(signified) is not completely arbitrary and conventional. One
can usually find a structural connection between the two that,
according to Saussure, is natural (Berger, 1995; Saussure,
1969). The connection between a symbol and referent may or
may not be physical. Saussure cited as an example the set of
scales that symbolize justice. Comparative few objects can
successfully portray the quality of even-handed fairness that
epitomizes the concept of justice (a chariot, a rifle, a mace
would fail).
For C.S. Pierce, the nature of the relationships between
the signifier and the signified was among the most important
aspects of semiotics. In contrast to Saussure's arbitrary and
conventional relationship, Pierce specified three types o f
signs: the icon, the index, and the symbol. The three cate-
gories of signifiers differ with respect to their relationships to
their signifieds. A n icon is a signification that resembles the
signified in some important way. A passport photograph is an
icon. A n index is a sign that represents its objects by virtue of
a physical association observable in the present. The mercury
190 Critical Art Pedagogy

in a thermometer indicates temperature. For someone in a

canoe on a river, the sounds of rapids or a waterfall constitute
an index. The relationship between signifier and signified is
causal and empirically predictable. A symbol is a sign whose
representation was formed by convention, arbitrariness or
habit. Pierce's concept of symbol, then, contrasts directly
with Saussure's. Religious symbols like the cross and the Star
of David are well-known examples. The heart shape as a
symbol for love is another. A message sent by semaphore is
another. The association is more or less arbitrary and a matter
of social consensus; it is a learned association. For Pierce, all
three types of signs require one to interpret at least part of
the meaning borne by the relationship between the sign and its
object. The work of both Saussure and Pierce receives closer
attention later in this chapter.

Concepts and Terminology in Semiotics

Images are, of course, important in critical art pedagogy.
Pierce saw images as complex collections of signs that may be
composed of all three types of signs (Noth, 1990). A n image
may be physically visible or an internal, mental phenomenon.
Images may be imagined, learned, or acculturated. Thus, semio-
tics offers the critical art education project exciting possi-
bilities for connecting individuals and art worlds. By analyzing
the use of signs in both the popular and archival art worlds, we
can come to see how art relates to society and how its mean-
ings are construed at the individual level. This process can
directly counter the tendency of traditional art education
practices to force students to download professional opinions
about the meaning of signs. Such processes of designating
ossified interpretations as official knowledge or absolute truth
actually close down students' experiences with art and prevent
the active interpretation and meaning formation that are
characteristic of critical pedagogy.
Examples abound in Jan Van Eyck's W e d d i n g P o r t r a i t
(1434). Traditional art history texts typically list signs in the
painting and what they have been officially interpreted to
signify. The single candle burning in the chandelier represents
God, who illuminates all. The shoes on the floor instead of on
the feet represent the "holy ground" of marriage. The dog,
Semiotics, Deconstruction, a n d Qualitative Methodology 191

likewise, represents marital fidelity. The bride's hand placed

on her stomach signifies her role in bearing children. The fruit
on the table and window sill represents the Virgin Mary. The
inscription on the wall, translated from Latin, means "Jan
Van Eyck was here, 1434" (Janson, 1995).
Traditional art history adduces credible evidence that
these signs were widely understood in the fifteenth century
European culture, and we generally read the symbols in Van
Eyck's work to portray the sanctity of the marriage contract.
Nevertheless, one could read these symbols quite differently.
Arnolfini's hand could be gesturing for silence. The fruit could
suggest temptation, like the apple in the Garden of Eden. The
burning candle could suggest sexual ardor. The dog could sym-
bolize uncontrolled animal nature. The red bed sheets could
suggest sexual passion. The shoes might have been cast off to
achieve silence or as the initial act of disrobing. In this
reading, the woman in the painting would no longer symbolize
a chaste bride. The lifting of the woman's dress could also
suggest disrobing or sexual allure. Might the mirror, to which
their backs are turned, symbolize conscience? In short, the
symbols could suggest a sexual liaison, not necessarily within
the sanctity of marriage.
Alternate semiotic readings of images, even far-fetched
readings, can help critical art pedagogy establish the porta-
bility or contestability of the relations between significations
and signifieds. Fostering this revelation promotes the critical
art pedagogy goal of creating a critical awareness as a prelude
to emancipatory action. It also creates the terms for student
and teacher agency. Both parties can take active roles in
producing knowledge about art and its meaning instead of
passively receiving summary truths to assimilate from unques-
tioned sources. Moreover, from the critical perspective, as
students and teachers produce knowledge, they conduct re-
search. Hence, the once-distinct borders between teaching
methods and research methods begin to blur.
Semiotics presents a number of concepts that help us un-
derstand how signs communicate meaning. The first is codes.
Sometimes meaning is implicit or otherwise difficult to under-
stand or interpret. Codes are simply rules or guidelines that
facilitate the formation of meaning when it is not readily
192 Critical Art Pedagogy

apparent. We understand codes to meaning conveyed by

thinking processes and communication in any medium in
relation to Saussure's principle of the arbitrary or unmoti-
vated relationship between the signifier and the signified.
Like meaning, codes can be explicit or implicit. Examples
of explicit codes include the Morse pulses in telegraphy, the
binary numbers used in computer language, and various secret
communication systems varying in complexity from those
used in global espionage during war to the substitution of num-
bers for letters of the alphabet in written messages between
children. Other not so obvious codes are embedded in the
cultural context. Examples include specific forms of dress or
body adornment like those that mark membership in street
gangs or a person's accent in speech. The list of codes is
virtually infinite since almost every artifact in a culture and a
language can be used to interpret the meanings of signs
(Deeley, 1990).
Persons may or may not be aware of the codes they use.
Racial prejudice provides an apt example. Discrimination
against people on the basis of skin color may seem to some
"natural" or "common sense" or "the way things are." A l l
these expressions indicate that the racially prejudiced person
is using tacit codes with little or no awareness of them. On the
other hand, racially segregated schools, businesses, or clubs
that discriminate openly as a matter of policy indicate de-
liberate and explicit code use.
Decoding, of course, is hardly a cut-and-dried, linear, objec-
tive process. Different people interpret codes differently.
Some people may perceive a code while others may be un-
aware of its existence, much less its meaning. Berger (1995)
noted that differential decoding often occurs in literature and
the arts when artists and their audiences use different codes. A
critical art teacher would observe that the students' codes and
interpretations need not always match those of the artist or
the critic or the teacher to indicate successful learning. In-
stead, critical art pedagogy will focus on student codes and
decoding with the goal of making them explicit to the student
instead of changing them to approximate those of artists,
critics, teachers, and other experts celebrated as sources of
knowledge. Critical art pedagogy may include a study of the
Semiotics, Deconstruction, and Qualitative M e t h o d o l o g y 193

artist's codes to illustrate alternative ways of creating

meaning art and communicating about art. But critical peda-
gogy will avoid presenting artists' codes as correct or superior
to those of a student.
Two more important concepts in semiotics, connotation
and denotation, affect the communication of meaning. Mean-
ing can be suggested, as in connotation, or expressed directly
and literally by denotation. Berger (1995) observed that
connotation is analogous to the signified while denotation is
analogous to the signifier. But this analogy should include the
stipulation that a signifier can have many signifieds, and the
individual carries out the process of linking the two. The indi-
vidual completes the connotative meanings by identifying the
signifieds most meaningful at the personal level at a given
time and place.
Metaphor is another important device for the communi-
cation of meaning recognized in semiotics. Like connotation
and denotation, the concept of metaphor survives in semio-
tics with its general meaning intact. Most familiar in litera-
ture, metaphor is, of course, the use of one entity to stand for
another. Metaphor gathers its literary power because the
speaker declares forthrightly that one thing i s another despite
the speaker's certain knowledge that the words are not
literally true. Metaphor is consciously ambiguous veracity. It
allows its user to enlist an untruth to communicate more
truthfully than would be possible with facts only.
Since it is considered the strongest figure of speech, the
term "metaphor" is sometimes used as a more general cate-
gory to include other types of figurative language. In fact, it
can stand for the entire class of literary devices, the definition
this discussion avoids. "Trope" would be a better term for the
more general meaning than metaphor. A s used here, "meta-
phor" means the direct substitution of one thing for another
to achieve an effect.
Simile, another trope or device to express meaning in
figurative language, uses the prepositions "like" or "as" to
make its comparison. Semiotics recognizes that the use of
metaphor, simile, and other tropes extends beyond literature.
Metaphors are central to our thinking processes, perception
and language. Echoes of cognitive psychology reverberate in
194 Critical Art Pedagogy

the idea that metaphor is central to the significant dimensions

of human mental, social, and cultural experience.
Still another trope of interest in semiotics is metonymy.
Metaphor establishes meaning by emphasizing the similarity
or analogy between two things. The metaphor then substitutes
one thing for the other. In metonymy, by contrast, one
entity takes the place of or is referred to as another entity
commonly associated with it in time and place. For example,
reporters often refer to the president as "The White House"
to describe some action the chief executive has taken: "The
White House confirmed today that. . ."
In synecdoche, a subcategory of metonymy, a part is sub-
stituted for the whole or vice versa. Examples include "the
hand of God," the number of "heads" of cattle, and the call
"all hands on deck." In each case, a part is substituted for the
whole or the whole for a part. Like metaphor, metonymy is
pervasive in everyday speech, not just in literature. Both
figurative devices function to organize human thinking pro-
cesses and actions and establish relationships of meaning in
the world. In M e t a p h o r s We L i v e By (1980), George Lakoff
and Mark Johnson argued that all concepts are metaphorical
in nature and therefore vital components of thinking proces-
ses and that metonymies are critical links between metaphors
and human experience permitting metaphor to be understood.
In other words, to be coherent, symbols must refer to objects,
qualities and sensations that have been consciously experi-
enced and are available in the memory for cognition.
Discourse in the critical art class can include explorations
of how metaphor and metonymy convey meaning, especially
embedded meanings. A dialogue focused on metaphor and
metonymy can emphasize the importance of examining mean-
ing as personal experience enriched by a variety of qualities
brought by the play of metaphor, metonymy, and other
tropes in the language of everyday life. Discourse that includes
a sensitivity to the play of metaphor and metonymy can
heighten an awareness of the subtleties and shades of meaning
in all forms of communication.
Semiotics has contributed two modes of analysis to
literary and cultural criticism that one can also apply to art
and critical art pedagogy: synchronic and diachronic analysis.
Semiotics, Deconstruction, and Qualitative M e t h o d o l o g y 195

Synchronic analysis of a text examines that text at a single

moment in time, as though one were examining a cross
section. Diachronic analysis takes an historical perspective.
The succession of events or parts of a text are considered
over the flow of time. The focus is on how meanings evolve.
Synchronic analysis might focus on a single art work.
Diachronic analysis would focus on a style or period or the
development of a body of work by a particular artist. One can-
not use synchronic and diachronic analysis simultaneously; but
one can use them in alternating fashion for critical analysis.
Both serve well as means of understanding.
Structuralism, a theoretical perspective, emerged from
semiotics, linguistics, and cultural anthropology. It considers
the relationships among the components of a system instead
of the individual components independent from the system's
context. In view of their shared emphases on signs and the
relations among them as systems for the formation of
meaning, structuralism and semiotics are practically indis-
tinguishable. Structuralism, however, places greater emphasis
on the role of binary oppositions in thinking and linguistic
processes. A structural analysis of a text identifies opposite
qualities and determines how they establish meanings, hidden
or otherwise. Structuralism, and especially its concept of
binary opposition, influenced the emergence of deconstruc-
tion, a contemporary approach to philosophy and literary
criticism developed by Jacques Derrida (1991) and others. The
possibilities for critical art pedagogy deconstruction suggests
receive closer attention later in this chapter.
The concept of metalinguistic codes, contributed to
semiotics by the linguist Roman Jakobson, also contribute to
critical art pedagogy (Noth, 1990). Sometimes "communi-
cations" refers to the codes by which we interpret meaning,
and when we do so, we become alert to the operation of the
code itself as we interpret the relations between the signifier
and the signified. Consider, for example, the cultural differen-
ces in the meaning of the act of opening the mouth to bare
the teeth. In Western cultures, we call this act smiling, a
generally accepted indication of pleasure or friendliness. But
some Eastern cultures consider opening the mouth to bare the
teeth, far from indicative of pleasure or friendliness, rude or
196 Critical Art Pedagogy

bizarre. In the canine world, the same act often signals

aggression or danger. At any rate, the metalinguistic function
—that is, the focus on the code as a code instead of on its
content—presents opportunities for alternative understand-
ings and for contesting exclusive, one-dimensional epistemo-
logies. The metalinguistic function of codes exemplifies how
semiotics can contribute to critical art pedagogy. A n increased
awareness of how meaning or knowledge is constructed and
conveyed encourages the scrutiny of and challenges to "com-
mon sense," "the natural order of things," and embedded
negative influences. In the fertile ground art and semiotics
share, one can nourish a meta-awareness or critical conscious-
ness of how meaning evolves both implicitly and explicitly.

Implications of Semiotics for Critical Art Pedagogy

Semiotics-based instruction in art begins with the recognition
that individuals learn and express themselves with a variety of
sign systems. In addition to language, these systems may
include pictorial, musical and dance and movement signs; non-
verbal gestures; and numerical signs. School curricula operate
through sign systems, and curricular and instructional reform
including an emphasis on a variety of sign systems would
challenge the privileged position of language and the logocen-
tricity inherent in traditional approaches to education. One
can deploy semiotics-based approaches and ideas toward the
emancipatory ends of critical pedagogy in art. For example,
semiotics' concepts of the relational nature of meaning, the
importance of context, and the role of the individual in the
interpretation of the meanings of signs are all features that
correlate with the beliefs and goals of critical art pedagogy.
One can also encourage a critical version of semiotics-based
art instruction by bringing to light power relations in specific
sign systems, by showing how signs reconstruct power and
oppression, and by demonstrating how alternative meanings
can be formed from signs whose meanings are supposedly
fixed. Teachers and students can focus on the task of de-
veloping an awareness of how signs interplay in art works and
in art history and criticism.
But one important caveat pertains to the incorporation of
semiotics into the theoretical bases of critical art pedagogy.
Semiotics, Deconstruction, and Qualitative M e t h o d o l o g y 197

Students, teachers, and all others in the critical discourse about

art instruction and learning should constantly scrutinize the
curriculum and instructional practices for evidence that the
various signs systems operating in a particular educational
setting do not become tacitly arranged in a static, power-based
hierarchy. The multicultural, multi-media, interdisciplinary in-
structional approaches critical art pedagogy may seem to
favor do not inherently guarantee a balance of power among
forms of knowledge or among students.
Language certainly plays an important part in art learn-
ing; however, language must not be allowed to achieve such
dominance that it excludes such non-linguistic forms of knowl-
edge as those typically available through the arts. For example,
the legitimacy of art production in critical art pedagogy must
not be construed as relying for validation solely on art's
verbal domains: art criticism, art history, and aesthetics.
Making art is a form of knowing in the semiotic sense that in
the act of art making, one uses signs to communicate mean-
ing. Semiotics thus provides critical art pedagogy with a con-
ceptual basis for a valued idea: that art making is a form of
knowledge. In critical art pedagogy, making art is a form of
praxis. Making art objects intimately involves making value-
based art knowledge. Using signs and interpreting signs are
fundamental acts in semiotics-based pedagogy, and the
importance of sign use and interpretation supersedes sign
type. Regardless of whether the signs are linguistic, visual, or
musical, learning transpires when humans exchange signs.
Participants in critical art pedagogy can usefully incorporate
ideas from semiotics in ways that advance emancipatory
goals. Semiotics can contribute to the production of dangerous
knowledge, and realizing that the art world's archive and
hierarchies that compromise emancipatory learning are sign
systems that one can understand, challenge and subvert is
dangerous knowledge.

A Historical Overview of Semiotics

Although a definitive history of semiotics has yet to appear,
its genesis is generally well known. The development of semio-
tics underwent two distinct phases. The first began anony-
mously with the realization that the sign is an important
198 Critical Art Pedagogy

component of human knowledge with its own nature and ways

of operating. This phase languished for centuries with occa-
sional ideas about signs appearing in desultory fashion as
secondary issues subsumed under other questions and issues in
philosophy's mainstream. The second phase featured the
deliberate construction of semiotics as a more or less formal
field of inquiry with its own sharply defined concepts, termino-
logies, and methods of inquiry. The primary influences on
semiotics include philosophy, semantics, logic, rhetoric, her-
meneutics, linguistics, epistemology, aesthetics and various
sciences (Noth, 1990).
Casting a wide intellectual net, semiotics is a product of
diverse influences, and is still developing. In fact, the plural
form "semiotics" replaced the singular version only recently.
The plural form first appeared in the 1964 book A p p r o a c h e s
t o Semiotics by Thomas Sebeok and his colleagues. The plural
form accurately reflects the multiple sources and applications
of semiotics.
Noth (1990) found evidence of semiotic awareness in
Plato. In the "Glaucon," Plato recounts Socrates' example of
the bed to explicate his theory of three levels of reality: the
ideal, the physical, and the representational. The ideal bed
exists apart from the human mind as a universal truth, the
highest plane of reality. A particular bed, the physical object
in which a person sleeps, occupies a lower order of reality.
The lowest order is the representation of a bed that an artist
renders. Plato considered both the second- and third-order
realities to be signs, and he considered these types of signs to
be incomplete versions of meaning or truth. As we know, this
theory provided the philosophical basis for the early margina-
lization of art and artists.
An embedded (sic) implication in Plato's anecdote per-
tains to semiotics. He believed that since ultimate truth exists
only as the ideal, it remains independent from the realm of
such signs as words or visual symbols. The study of such signs
is, therefore, inferior. The best education would center on the
ideal world. Semiotics continued its diffused development im-
peded at least in part by this tacit prejudice.
Aristotle's influence steered semiotic concepts away from
Plato's ideal world. Aristotle believed spoken words to be signs
Semiotics, Deconstruction, a n dQualitative Methodology 199

of mental or cognitive events and written words to be signs

for these spoken words. He also believed that thoughts corre-
spond to objective reality—that is, entities in the physical
world—experienced virtually the same way for all people. It
followed then that thoughts and mental events are the same
for all people. Meaning, to Aristotle, was immutable and in-
controvertible regardless of the form its expression takes
(Noth, 1990).
But Aristotle also believed that although all persons per-
ceived objective reality the same way, the words or signs they
used to refer to entities in the objective world can differ. Dif-
ferent words and signs, as they exist in different languages, are
arbitrary and conventional. Aristotle wrote in the second chap-
ter of P e r i H e r m e n e i a s , that names and words do not occur
naturally; they are simply sounds that by convention become
attached to certain entities. As Noth (1990) observed, Aris-
totle's implicit doctrine of signs reserves the arbitrariness and
conventional basis of signs on the level of expression and com-
munication only.
Deeley (1990) situated the early realization of semiotic
concepts and consciousness in the philosophy of the Stoics,
who developed an implicit doctrine of signs and resisted the
idea that meaning must have an objective, physical existence.
Meaning, they thought, could be intangible. While only frag-
ments of their writings remain, the nascent Stoic doctrine of
signs seems to have included the important proposition that
signs are interpreted logically and become known through men-
tal processing.
The Stoic sign model consists of these three components:
(1) the signifier, which is known or perceived through sensory
modalities; (2) an intangible component called l e k t o n , or
intended meaning; and (3) the material object in the physical
world. The Stoics believed that a sign must be linked to an ob-
ject external to it, and they differentiated two types of signs,
those that commemorate and those that indicate. Commemo-
rative signs signify entities that have an established, previous-
ly observed association with a sign. Indicative signs refer to
entities that are novel or apparently unassociated with a sign.
The Stoics' philosophical rivals, the Epicureans, also de-
veloped a doctrine of signs. Their model, however, excluded
200 Critical A r t Pedagogy

l e k t o n , the intended immaterial meaning component in the

Stoic theory of signs. This exclusion implies that the Epicure-
ans considered signs to be simple reflections of the objective
world. The processes of sensory perception, therefore, simply
transfer objective data from the external world as is, with no
interpretation (Deeley, 1990).
An Epicurean philosopher, Sextus Empiricus, observed
that animals use signs to perform certain acts and offered the
example of a dog tracking some beast, as Sextus speculated, by
following its footprints. To repudiate the Stoic concept of
l e k t o n , Sextus further speculated that the dog did not engage in
logical deduction or induction to form a meaningful conclu-
sion of the beast's whereabouts. He took this observation as a
successful refutation of the Stoics' belief that humans under-
stood signs as a result of logic or mental processing. While we
now know that dogs use scent instead of footprints for
tracking, scent qualifies as a sign as legitimate as footprints,
contingent on the most receptive sensory modality of the
receiver of the sign. Moreover, Sextus Empiricus' argument
anticipated the later investigations of animal communication
via sign. Eventually, Sebeok (1963) introduced the terms
"zoosemiotics" and "anthroposemiotics" to differentiate
animal and human uses of signs for communication.
Noth (1990) traced semiotic ideas to ancient medicine.
The physician and writer Galen (ca. 130-200) used the term
semeiosis to mean reaching a diagnosis by interpreting the
signs of illness. We still think of symptoms today as signs.
According to Noth, semeiosis and its variants remain in use in
the medical terminology used in European countries and else-
where.
Augustine (354-430 A.D.), a towering figure in intellectual
history, marks the transition from the Greco-Roman classical
period to the medieval period. Belonging to neither era exclu-
sively but in part to both, Augustine believed, with the Stoics,
that the mind takes an active role in the process of inter-
preting the meaning of a sign. The sign creates a sensory im-
pression and also causes something else beside this impression
to come into being in the mind—that is to say, meaning. A u -
gustine added a theological dimension by asserting that signs
are earthlv reflections of God.
Semiotics, Deconstruction, a n d Qualitative Methodology 2 0 1

We generally credit Augustine with conceiving of a doc-

trine of signs as a formal mode of inquiry. He defined the sign
as a concept composed of words ( o n o m a t a ) and natural symp-
toms ( s e m e i a ) . "Natural symptoms" refers to sensory per-
ceptions. The importance of Augustine's contribution is its
emphasis on the idea that signs function by means of a linkage
between the intangible world of words and the material world
perceivable via sensory modalities like sight and hearing.
By the medieval era, the liberal arts of academe had evolv-
ed into the trivium and quadrivium. The quadrivium included
arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music. The trivium—
consisting of grammar, rhetoric and logic—provided a com-
fortable home for semiotics. Some medieval Scholastic philo-
sophers came to believe, in contrast to Plato, that universals
or ultimate truth did not exist materially and independent of
entities in the observable world. In fact, they believed that
universals exist only in particular objects. The phrase "green
tree," for example, contains a noun and an adjective. "Tree"
is a particular thing, while "green" is a universal quality. The
Scholastics argued that greenness does not exist materially as a
universal apart from particular entities that, being green,
embody greenness. Universals, then, were signs of qualities or
characteristics having no material existence themselves.
In the early 1300s, William of Ockham suggested that an
idea could be a natural sign. Ockham argued that universals
were words or concepts without physical existence (Hon-
derich, 1995). A t the same time, Petrus d'Ailly distinguished
two types of signs: s i g n a f o r m a l i a , and s i g n a i n s t r u m e n t a l i a .
The former refers to ideas or personal knowing through in-
ternal signs; the latter refers to signs for public knowledge or
the external communication of knowledge.
A s for the development of semiotics up to the times of
Ockham and d'Ailly, the main point of contention centered
on whether the meaning of a sign resided in the object it
referred to in the external physical world or, conversely,
whether meaning could be thought of as occurring or being
completed in the human mind (Deeley, 1990). In short, the
issue was whether signs impinge on the mind from without or
mental processes form them within. If the latter, then a sign's
meanings must be relative, an idea that has generated
202 Critical A r t Pedagogy

considerable controversy throughout the history of philo-

sophy and especially in the medieval period of Ockham and
d'Ailly when absolutism and certainty reigned supreme. If the
former proposition is true, then signs are absolute and self-
evident from observation of objects in the external physical
world to which they refer. If signs are relative, then the
meaning of a particular sign can, of course, change in relation
to contextual circumstances and differences among humans'
mental and perceptual processes (Noth, 1990).
During the medieval period, a group of scholars referred to
as the Modist School also conducted inquiries with implica-
tions for semiotics. They concerned themselves chiefly with
language, believing language and the structure of grammar to
be reflections of the natural world. They believed all languages
to have the same structure, and they postulated three
elements of signification or meaning that are parts of this
universal structure of language: the entity, the act of knowing,
and the voice (or word). The Modists then developed ela-
borate theories to explain how these elements operated to
form meaning. Their contribution to semiotics lies in the
understanding that a word becomes a sign only when we
associate a specific sound with a particular referent.
For a long time after the medieval era, semiotics under-
went only minor conceptual changes and shifts in previously
elaborated positions. In other words, semiotics traveled a
fitful, indirect path, embedded as a subsidiary element of
unrealized importance in treatments of other philosophical
issues. But an exception to this pattern occurred in France in
the mid 1660s at the School of Port Royal where philoso-
phers Arnauld, Lancelot, and Nicole developed a systematic
theory of grammar that employed semiotic concepts. They
differentiated these four types of signs: indexical natural signs,
motivated symbols, natural icons, and arbitrary conventional
signs.
I n d e x i c a l n a t u r a l signs were non-arbitrary indications of
probable or certain meaning. Examples include the virtual
certainty that smoke means fire and the relative probability
that when we see a robin, spring is on its way. M o t i v a t e d
symbols are invented or conventional signs. The Christian
cross and the Jewish Star of David are examples. A n a t u r a l
S e m i o t i c s , D e c o n s t r u c t i o n , a n d Q u a l i t a t i v e M e t h o d o l o g y 203

i c o n is a mimetic sign, like a person s reflection in a pool or

water. A r b i t r a r y c o n v e n t i o n a l signs are written or spoken
words, flags, logos, heraldic emblems and the like. The Port
Royal School also defined two types of signification, proper
and accessory, which anticipated the contemporary semiotic
concepts of denotation and connotation (Noth, 1990).
Dominicus Soto in the mid-seventeenth century, managed
to dismantle the requirement of linkage between sign and
perceptible object that had relegated human mentation to a
passive role of receiving instead of interpreting a sign's
meaning. Soto published several objections to the necessity of
sign-world linkage and argued that, historically, the nature of a
sign had relied on two determinants, the content or meaning
of the sign and the cognitive processes of the individual
receiving it. The sign's dependence on these two con-
tingencies, particularly the inherent subjectivity of the per-
son, gained acceptance for the idea of the relativistic nature
of signs that characterizes our contemporary understanding of
semiotics. Soto also argued that the dichotomy between the
sign as a mentally constructed internal device or as an
external phenomenon impinging on mental processes was
irresolvable because we cannot decisively observe or determine
whether a person is perceiving a sign from without or con-
structing a sign within. John Poinsot (1589-1644) also con-
tributed to the conception of signs as relative by speculating
that ideas exist as signs before we become aware of the objects
to which they refer (Noth, 1990).
The philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716)
articulated the principle that a sign's meaning evolves by con-
vention, another important contribution to semiotics. Leibniz
considered thinking and reasoning to be processes carried out
by the use of signs, and he argued that signs not only represent
material objects in the physical world but they also represent
the ideas in the mind that correspond to objective reality
while existing independent of it. By conceiving of signs as
part of reasoning processes, Leibniz placed signs in the foun-
dation of human knowledge.
Empiricist counterparts of Leibniz and other rationalists
also contributed to the continuing development of semiotics.
For example, Francis Bacon (1561-1626) was skeptical of the
204 Critical A r t Pedagogy

proposition that language has the capacity to serve as a

reliable vehicle of truth or knowledge. He based his skepticism
on the ambiguity he noticed in words. Since words are merely
tokens, Bacon argued, they may be misused. His belief that
thinking did not require words reopened the semiotic inquiry
into the operation of visual, gestural, musical, and other sign
systems.
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), another British empiricist,
underscored the important role signs play in mental phenome-
na, especially memory. Hobbes drew these distinctions between
signs and marks: We use signs to communicate with other
people; we use marks to make internal mental associations.
This idea surfaced again in modern semiotics and in such con-
temporary modes of inquiry as discursive and narrative psy-
chology.
In 1690, John Locke published his famous book, A n Essay
O n H u m a n U n d e r s t a n d i n g , in which he argued that experi-
ence is the source of all knowledge. This idea, generally con-
sidered to be the central precept of empiricism, is often
illustrated by Locke's metaphor of the mind as a t a b u l a r a s a ,
or a blank tablet. Experience subsequently writes knowledge
on the mind's tablet as the individual grows toward maturity.
In the last few pages of his book, Locke put forth a three-part
model of human knowledge consisting of p h u s i k e , p r a k t i k e ,
and s e m e i o t i k e (Colapietro, 1993). P h u s i k e (namely, physics)
consists of the study of the objective or physical world. This
form of human understanding was once called "natural philo-
sophy." Generally equivalent to scientific inquiry, phusike
deals with the world of entities, their operations, and their
composition. P r a k t i k e resembles the contemporary concept
of praxis. Locke intended it to refer to the application of
skills and knowledge to achieve useful, positive ends. His
s e m e i o t i k e is the study of signs either for personal under-
standing or for communication. Locke thereby receives credit
for coining the term "semiotics."
Locke distinguished two types of signs: w o r d s and i d e a s .
Nor did Locke accord the two types parallel status in the
structure of human understanding. Words stand for ideas, but
ideas, he believed, resulted from perceptions of objects in the
external world or from internal mental operations like
Semiotics, Deconstruction, and Qualitative M e t h o d o l o g y 205

thinking and reflection. Modern semiotics later rejected this

separation of words and ideas. Saussure, for example, argued
that the signifier and the signified are inextricably connected
or bound, in his analogy, like the two different sides of a piece
of paper (Deeley, 1990).
Radical idealist George Berkeley (1685-1753) abandoned
the duality between the external objective world and the
internal world of ideas and perceptions. Berkeley's aphorism
esse est p e r c i p i (to be is to be perceived) emphasized the role
of the mind in the interpretation of signs and de-emphasized
the importance of the objective world. Berkeley's view was
"pansemiotic": The world, indeed everything that exists, is
knowable through the vehicle of the sign. In Berkeley's
approach, the imperceptible differences between entities and
ideas were philosophically irrelevant because the mind can
deal only with what it perceives and cannot take into account
what is inaccessible to it. Signs arise in the mind from particu-
lar experienced ideas and perceptions. Berkeley further speci-
fied that the connections between the signifier and the sig-
nified bear no analogy to cause and effect. Instead, the signifi-
er, merely marks or indicates the signified. Smoke, to recycle
an earlier example, is generally more recognizable as a sign of
fire than as an effect of fire.
After Berkeley's work, Etienne de Condillac developed a
comprehensive theory of semiotics in France. For Condillac,
the use of signs was the fundamental process of human knowl-
edge. He postulated a hierarchy of semiotic processes that
constitute levels of knowledge. From most basic to most com-
plex, these processes include sensation, perception, consci-
ence, attention, reminiscence, imagination, contemplation,
memory, and reflection. In these semiotic operations, we can
discern three types of signs: accidental, natural and institu-
tional. Accidental signs include those connections established
in directly experienced circumstances. Further, the connec-
tions are arbitrary. Natural signs, on the other hand, are
unlearned, universal connections like crying out in response to
pain. Institutional signs are established explicitly by deliberate
convention and continued by consensus.
Johann Lambert (1728-1777) also developed a systematic
theory o f signs, and titling his work S e m i o t i k , he was
206 Critical Art Pedagogy

apparently the first philosopher to adopt Locke's terminol-

ogy. Lambert conceived of semiotics as an inquiry into the
function of language and other types of signs in the formation
of knowledge and truth. Like many others before him, Lam-
bert believed that human thought is carried out in signs. They
went on to distinguish four types of signs: natural signs,
arbitrary signs, imitations, and iconic representations. He
described various sign systems, including musical notation,
chemical formulas, gestures and social signs, natural and
scientific signs. Lambert believed that the latter sign system
offered the greatest access to reality, and also argued against
the arbitrary nature of signs.
Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945) published The P h i l o s o p h y of
S y m b o l i c F o r m s in three volumes between 1923 and 1929 and
described humans as "symbol-using animals" (Colapietro,
1993). Cassirer's interests focused mainly on the uses of signs
and symbols in myth, art, religion and culture. He considered
signs necessary components of concepts and, therefore, cen-
tral to thinking processes. He elaborated the concept of pan-
semiotics initiated by Berkeley, and believed that reality
existed only in the world of signs and symbols—that is,
meaning exists and can be conveyed only through signs.
Cassirer believed that signs and symbols unite our sensory and
spiritual dimensions.
The implications for semiotics in Cassirer's work
attracted the attention of thinkers like Suzanne Langer who
were particularly interested in art. Specifically, Cassirer argued
t h a t i n art—as in other spheres of human knowledge such as
myth, history, literature, and even science—meaning is
embodied in or actually created by symbols. Symbols are more
than mere imitations of a separate objective reality; they
create reality. With regard to art, Cassirer identified three
modes of expression and corresponding modes of representa-
tion, each characterized by differing degrees of association
between the signifier and signified: the mimetic, analogical,
and symbolic.
Charles Morris (1901-1979) sought to establish semiotics
as a formal science, and in so doing, he reframed much of the
theory of semiotics in terms compatible with behaviorism in
psychology. Among the outcomes, we find an emphasis on
Semiotics, Deconstruction, a n d Qualitative Methodology 2 0 7

interdisciplinary features. Morris divided semiotics into three

categories: syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. Syntax
involves the relationships among signs. Semantics takes up
the relationships between the sign and the object to which it
refers. Pragmatics addresses the uses, functions, and effects of
signs. In 1971, Morris collected his extensive scholarship
under the title W r i t i n g s i n t h e G e n e r a l T h e o r y of Signs.
Roland Barthes (1915-1980), a French scholar, envisioned
semiotics as an especially powerful tool for critical under-
standing. He adopted an approach to intellectual matters that
resembles critical theory and neo-Marxism. Throughout his
scholarship, literary work, and cultural criticism, Barthes
addressed the theme that society and culture operate so as to
sustain class structure and power by a system of hidden signs
and codes for interpreting meaning. The exposure of these
signs and codes, and the myths they perpetuate became
Barthes' goal. This interest has made his work a valuable re-
source for those interested in critical art pedagogy (Noth,
1990; Colapietro, 1993).
Another contribution to critical art pedagogy is Barthes'
distinction between "lisible" and "scriptible" texts. Coined
from the French verb l i r e meaning "to read," a lisible text is
non-interactive and requires the reader either to accept or
reject the whole text. A lisible text is constructed so that it is
read-or-erase-only. No interpretation is possible. Scriptible
texts, by contrast, require a reader to act as an interpreter.
Scriptible texts assign the reader a role in the construction of
the text's meaning, much like the role of the author. Barthes'
concepts and terminology hold great promise for critical
engagement with art in education and writing about art in
critical art pedagogy. Students and teachers can identify lisible
texts, which basically silence the reader-viewer, as potential
sources of oppression. Scriptible texts, both visual and
linguistic, are at once both the ends and the means of critical
art pedagogy. Barthes' many books include Elements of Semi-
o l o g y (1964), S/Z (1970), I m a g e , M u s i c , Text (1977), and
C a m e r a L u c i d a (1981).
Julia Kristeva (b. 1941) has influenced contemporary semi-
otics by framing it as a qualitative and open-ended research
methodology. Kristeva situated semiotics in the postmodern
208 Critical Art Pedagogy

intellectual culture by arguing that it is not a field of inquiry

which claims to move logically toward self-resolution in the
way positivist sciences regard themselves. She also observed
that semiotics is unrestricted by the temptation to reduce all
signs to linguistic forms, an insight central to understanding
and subverting the hierarchy that awards privilege to linguistic
signs and devalues the interplay of visual signs from which art
emerges.
The best known contemporary semiotician in the popular
culture is Umberto Eco. In addition to his prolific scholarship
in semiotics, aesthetics, myth, popular culture, and literary cri-
ticism, Eco is a best-selling novelist, and his Name of t h e Rose
(1980) became a film starring Sean Connery. His 1976 T h e o r y
of Semiotics reviewed his major ideas, and his wry remark,
"semiotics studies anything in the world that can be regarded
as a sign of something else," is now famous. That "something
else," of course, need not exist in objective reality, or any
other kind of reality for that matter. With this stipulation,
Eco described semiotics with both irony and great relevance
for critical art pedagogy, as the study of what may be used to
tell lies.
By the late nineteenth century, semiotics had coalesced
into a systematic body of thought and inquiry, emerging from
(or perhaps in spite of) its many disparate sources. Its princi-
pal twentieth century proponents were C.S. Pierce and
Ferdinand de Saussure.

C.S. P i e r c e
The work of Charles Sanders Pierce (1839-1914) marks the
beginning of modern semiotics. Unlike his precursors whose
semiotic thought was typically ancillary to other philoso-
phical inquiries, Pierce approached the project of semiotics as
a subject worthy of serious sustained philosophical analysis in
and of itself. Although now recognized as one of America's
most influential intellects, Pierce remained largely unknown in
his lifetime, working for years as a scientist with the U . S.
Geological Survey and writing philosophy in his spare time.
Mentioned briefly in Ogden and Richard's influential treat-
ment of semantics, The M e a n i n g of M e a n i n g (1923), Pierce's
semiotics was brought into the mainstream of linguistics by
Semiotics, Deconstruction, and Qualitative Methodology 2 0 9

Roman Jakobson and into literary theory as applied semiotics

by Umberto Eco, both of whom published widely in the 1960s
(Deeley, (1990).
Pierce's semiotics focuses on the broad conception that
human experience is essentially, even inescapably semiotic.
People, their thoughts, nature, the world, the universe—all are
collections of signs in relationship to one another. Signs are
universal. A s such, they are not merely one of several im-
portant categories of human experience: signs and semiosis
pervade all dimensions of human experience (Noth, 1990).
Pierce defined "sign" generally as anything taken to mean
something to someone. With considerably more elaboration,
he developed a three-part model consisting of the sign, its
meaning, and the object. The sign is that which is represented,
and meaning is the sign as it appears reconstructed in the
mind. Pierce created new terminology which in complexity
rivals quantitative methodology's most obfuscatory jargon.
For example, Pierce referred to the sign as the "repre-
sentamen." In the act of communicating, the representamen
is addressed to a particular person in whose mind inter-
pretation corresponding to the representamen emerges. This
emergence, in turn, produces a realization of what the
representamen stands for or means. Pierce called this meaning
the "interpretant." We can think of it as a sign of the sign,
the internal manifestation of the representamen a receiver
constructs.
The third component of Pierce's model is the object, the
tangible or intangible entity to which the sign refers. Pierce
considered signs entirely mental constructions, not a category
of physical objects in the world. Signs must be recognized or
defined as such to exist meaningfully. He also believed that
signs function actively. Pierce and other semioticians used the
term "semiosis," which as we have seen dates back to the
Stoic philosophers, to refer to the actions of signs in repre-
senting objects and producing meaning at the cognitive level
(Noth, 1990; Deeley, 1990).
To reflect his understanding that the world is constituted
by signs, Pierce extended his triadic model into a considerably
more complex form with many wheels within wheels. He
differentiated a hierarchy of three levels of interpretants, the
210 Critical Art Pedagogy

immediate, the dynamic, and the final. At the immediate

interpretant level, a received representamen elicits an
emotional or pre-intellectual sense of what the sign may mean
or what qualities may be associated with it. The immediate
interpretant is the preliminary, primitive awareness of a sign.
This level occurs before a person analyzes the sign and before
a person takes any action in response to the sign.
The second level consists of the dynamic interpretant, the
person's initial consciousness of the sign and the person's
active construal of its meaning. At this level, the sign and its
meaning is an entirely singular, particular event in the
person's consciousness.
The third level, the final interpretant, is the logical or
symbolic generalization of meaning. It is the level of intellec-
tual awareness of a sign's meaning shared more or less univer-
sally. To Pierce, this level of interpretant had a hypothetical,
conditional, or provisional connotation in the sense that an
individual may propose and test meaning.
Indulging his penchant for tripartite categorization
schemes, Pierce devised a three-level classification system for
signs. Each level also contains its own trichotomy, and each
corresponds to one of the three levels of interpretants. The
first trichotomy consists of three types of representamen:
"qualsigns," "sinsigns," and "legisigns." A qualsign is the use of
perceptible quality as a sign. Although the quality must be
embodied in some entity, the quality itself constitutes the
sign. A speeding automobile exemplifies the qualsign "speed."
A sinsign is a sign that is an objective entity. The car is a sin-
sign, perhaps a sign meaning to a teenager freedom. A legisign
is a generality that, by convention, acts as a sign. The slogan
"speed kills" is a legisign.
Pierce's second trichotomy presents an organization of
the relationships between the sign and the object—namely the
icon, index, and symbol detailed earlier.
Pierce's third trichotomy classifies signs according to their
relationships with their interpretants. The categories are
"rheme," "dicent," and "argument." A rheme is simply a
word, term, category, or concept; it is not subject to debate; it
simply exists. The color green, the order Hymenoptera, and
nighttime are all rhemes. Whether a particular entity is
Semiotics, Deconstruction, and Qualitative Methodology 211

properly described by a certain rheme or belongs to its

category is subject to debate. A dicent is essentially a state-
ment or observation, and it may be evaluated as true or false.
A dicent is analogous to a proposition. It does not, however,
contain evidence for its status as truth or fallacy. The state-
ments "The grass is a lovely shade of green," "I was stung by
either a bee or wasp," and "It is a dark night" are all examples
of dicents.
Argument, the third category of sign-interpretant rela-
tionships, is a proposition and the evidence supporting it. A r -
guments are signs that point interpretants toward law-like
meanings.
Pierce's taxonomy of signs has 27 distinct classes, and
Noth (1990) configured all 27 into a matrix. It is, however,
most important to understand that a sign does not occupy just
one cell in such a matrix. A sign never belongs to one and
only one category. Signs change; signifiers become signifieds.
Pierce meant his classification system to be dynamic, not sta-
tic. It is based on how signs function, act, and operate, rather
than on how they are distinguished with regard to a set of
constant, irreducible properties. Knowledge a b o u t signs is like
knowledge f r o m signs: It emerges from considerations of each
sign as an individual occurrence in a particular context.
Those interested in a critical art pedagogy should see that
these signs appear in visual and linguistic texts like art history,
criticism, and aesthetics. The process of understanding them
and how they relate to one another in the production of
meaning is knowledge making, critical art pedagogy's defini-
tion of research. Understanding meaning as conveyed by signs
and constituted by an active interpretation of the interplay of
signs is fundamental to the critical task of revealing and
resisting sources of oppression within art worlds.

F e r d i n a n d de Saussure
Whereas C. S. Pierce's semiotics originated within a philoso-
phical perspective, Ferdinand de Saussure approached semio-
tics as subsidiary of linguistics. Saussure is regarded as the
father of modern linguistics for his work in that field, but his
contributions to modern semiotics are usually considered less
consequential than those of Pierce. Saussure lived from 1857
212 Critical Art Pedagogy

to 1913, and, like the work of Pierce, his work in semiotics

went largely unrecognized during his lifetime. Saussure's book,
C o u r s de L i n g u i s t i c G e n e r a t e was published not by him, but by
two of his students at the University of Geneva who had taken
careful notes in his classes from 1907 to 1911.
"Semiology" was Saussure's term for his proposed
"science of signs". One should note that Saussure was de-
scribing what he thought semiotics as a field of inquiry might
entail. In other words, he was proposing what had not yet
been actualized. Further, Saussure was interested only in the
human use of signs, or "anthroposemiotics."
We find the principles of arbitrariness and convention
central to Saussure's semiotics. Although these concepts did
not originate with Saussure, he accorded them prominence in
his theories. He saw his task as the examination of the charac-
teristics of language that make it the prototype sign system
(Deeley, 1990; Noth, 1990; Colapietro, 1993). One such
characteristic is that the arbitrary nature of the linkages
between words and meanings are more extensive in language
than in other sign systems. Visual signs, for example, tend to
rely to a greater extent on isomorphic or mimetic correspon-
dences to establish meanings. A second characteristic of
language is that as a social phenomenon, people use it almost
universally as a sign system. A third characteristic is that
language operates with few predetermined limitations or
expressive requirements—that is to say, participation in the
use of language as a sign system is highly accessible. A fourth
characteristic is that language can achieve a wide range of
meaning from its vast repertoire of signs. Finally, Saussure
considered language the prototype sign system because it
operates more or less independently and is, therefore, less
liable to be co-opted or radically changed by individuals or
small groups with particular agendas for it.
The critical mind considers this last characteristic highly
questionable in view of the premise that the vagaries of
language constitute a powerful vector of hegemony and op-
pressive power relations. In fact, critical minds consider it
crucial to develop an understanding of how language or
linguistic signs become privileged over other signs, especially
visual signs presented and seen as art. A quick look at the
Semiotics, Deconstruction, and Qualitative M e t h o d o l o g y 213

languages of contemporary advertizing and public relations

and at the effects on language and culture the mass media
exert suggests that, contrary to Saussure's belief, two of the
primary characteristics that constitute language as a sign
system, its inherent ambiguity and its capacity for change, not
only make language the most fertile ground for hegemonic
assault, but actually forge it as well into an ideal colonizing
instrument. In short, with its inherent ambiguity and Protean
malleability, language is a sign system that can help hierar-
chies form and persist, especially in covert fashion.
A critical perspective on the history of education reveals
that the politics of literacy amounts to the story of the disen-
franchisement of one group by another by the deliberate,
though often tacit exploitation of the characteristic instabili-
ty of language, especially in written form. A critical perspec-
tive reveals that the ambiguity and flexibility characteristic of
all sign systems render them vulnerable to exploitative use,
which is why we need critique and need to develop critical con-
sciousness in schools with initiatives like critical art pedagogy.
Although Saussure build his model of the sign within the
context of language, the model is generally applicable to
visual signs as well. Saussure did not, however, leave an elabora-
tion of nonlinguistic semiotics. According to Saussure, a sign
consists of two parts, the signified and the signifier. Unlike
Pierce's model, Saussure's omits any reference to an external
object. For Saussure, the signified and the signifier are integral.
They are distinguishable, but they are dynamically inter-
related: a change in one producing a change in the other.
Saussure referred to the signified and the signifier meta-
phorically, you will recall, as the front and back of the same
piece of paper. The sign is, of course, the whole sheet. Also,
Saussure's analogy notwithstanding, the sign is a mental event
with no objective existence.
Saussure proposed the term "semiology" for his work. He
also proposed that semiotics or semiology operate as a branch
of psychology or sociology with linguistics as its "patron."
Deeley (1990) concluded that these proposals eventually
compromised the development of semiotics and some of
Saussure's ideas.
214 Critical Art Pedagogy

Almost every major philosopher has considered signs

Semiotics, therefore, is hardly a newfangled strategy for sub-
verting traditional hierarchies; it is an old-fangled strategy. A
somewhat loosely constructed body of concepts and mode of
inquiry, semiotics developed as an integral component of sys-
tematic philosophy beginning in Greco-Roman times. A semio-
tic consciousness has always been relevant to many of the
questions that have long occupied philosophy. Semiotics' po-
tential contributions to critical art pedagogy, then, come with
a certain weight accompanying its long intellectual history.
As both a research methodology and an instructional
method important in critical art pedagogy, semiotics is per-
haps best considered an "approach" or even an "attitude." As
an attitude, it encourages reflection on human experience as it
is lived. This attitude brings to critical art pedagogy the recog-
nition that we can understand art and its instrumental
functions in emancipatory outcomes by interpreting signs and
their meanings. Unlike positivist research procedures and
instructional methods, semiotics insists upon no ordered se-
quence of linear steps toward a set of predetermined educa-
tional outcomes, one of the expectations to be avoided in the
enactment of a critical art pedagogy. Semiotics has furnished
critical art pedagogy with the theoretical means to establish
the relational nature of meaning and value in art. A n art
object, like other artifacts is a configuration of signs. Their
meaning resides not in their formal properties, but rather in
their interpretation. Critical art pedagogy's adoption of semio-
tics seems destined to involve close examinations of how art
signs have functioned and continue to function as oppressive
modalities that co-op the emancipatory potential of artistic
knowledge.

Deconstruction
Among the barriers to understanding deconstruction, the tacit
assumptions and expectations that accompany typical descrip-
tions of traditional research methodologies, both qualitative
and quantitative, may be the greatest. Deconstruction eschews
a bounded set of concepts and procedures arranged into a
sequence of steps designed to answer a narrowly defined re-
search question. Instead, deconstruction provides a general
S e m i o t i c s , D e c o n s t r u c t i o n , a n d Q u a l i t a t i v e M e t h o d o l o g y 215

approach to the critical task or searching tor meaning by

examining the relationships within and around a text that con-
tribute to the formation of meaning.
A n important contemporary intellectual movement,
deconstruction has emerged through the application of semio-
tics and critical consciousness to such projects as developing a
critique of Western philosophy and articulating a new frame-
work for literary theory and criticism. But it is applicable to a
broad range of cultural forms, including visual art and art
education.
French philosopher Jacques Derrida (b. 1930), the major
figure in the development of deconstruction, has written
several books on the subject including Of G r a m m a t o l o g y
(1967), W r i t i n g a n d Difference (1967), D i s s e m i n a t i o n (1972),
The M a r g i n s of P h i l o s o p h y (1972), and Post C a r d (1980).
Although Derrida's work has many philosophical antecedents
—especially Saussure, Pierce, Husserl, and Heidegger—it can
be said that deconstruction as a public intellectual discourse
really began during a 1966 symposium at Johns Hopkins
University where Derrida read his essay, "Structure, Sign, and
Play," and set forth the theoretical bases for a critique of
Western philosophy since Plato (Colapietro, 1993). The
review presented here describes the tenets of deconstruction
and explains how they can serve as a foundations for critical
art pedagogy.
Deconstruction is a research style remarkably congenial to
critical art pedagogy. Like semiotics and critical art pedagogy
itself, deconstruction is both a research methodology and an
approach to instruction in the sense that it concerns itself
with the creation of meaning and knowledge making. Decon-
struction and critical art pedagogy share the premise that
research methods and instructional methods converge in the
processes of learning during engagement with art and art
making. Inquiring, contesting, discovering, and revealing are
basic activities in learning, teaching, and research, especially
when the three take critical forms that lead to dangerous
knowledge. Deconstruction, as a method of generating
knowledge, is more concerned with examining, interpreting,
proposing, participating, and reflecting than with verifying
and proving, two familiar concerns of positivist research meth-
216 Critical Art Pedagogy

odologies (Berger, 1995). But like other theoretical founda-

tions of critical art pedagogy, deconstruction relies on open
set of general ideas that come to life in particular contexts
and in the actions and experiences of individuals as they tran-
sact with other individuals. Also like critical art pedagogy,
deconstruction is a continually evolving process.
As Norris (1986) observed, deconstruction sets out to
create meaning by challenging the hierarchies and asym-
metrical power relationships that pervade our culture and pro-
duce distorted patterns of thought, belief, and behavior. These
hierarchies may be implicitly or explicitly manifest in texts of
all kinds, and a text is any form of communication from
which meaning is formed, including a linguistic text like a
book and a visual text like a painting. Almost anything in the
world can be a text. Colapietro (1993) noted that our word
"text" derives from two Latin words: t e x e r e , which means "to
weave," and t e x t u m , meaning "web." This observation under-
scores etymologically the deconstructionist principle that a
text's meanings are a set of interrelated elements constructed
consciously and deliberately in human experience, rather than
objectively resident in the text itself. The reader, not the
original author, is the weaver. The privilege of defining
meaning does not belong solely to the author-originator. The
reader-interpreter is the real creator of the text's meanings.
The author presents, in essence, a negotiable document.
Deconstructionist terms like "text" and "reader" often
suggest a preoccupation with literary criticism and a definition
that favors literary forms of communication. These terms,
however, reflect the origins of deconstruction as a recently
evolved theory initially applied to literary criticism and
literary theory (Bressler, 1994). Notice that since a text can
consist of virtually any entity in our culture, deconstruction
certainly applies to such visual communication modalities as
art in the same ways and in the same form as it is to literary
texts. Deconstructionists see no merit in creating a jargon
that distinguishes between types of texts. In fact, one of the
problematic structures deconstruction contests is the tacit dis-
tinction between linguistic and visual texts that typically
privileges linguistic forms of knowledge.
Semiotics, Deconstruction, a n dQualitative M e t h o d o l o g y 217

A deconstructionist interrogates texts as an engaged

participant, not as a user of an external methodology. Decon-
struction is applied from w i t h i n , not t o , the task of inter-
preting a text. Texts do not contain self-evident, absolute
meanings independent of an individual reader's interpretation.
One must not approach a text as a coherent, consistent
uniformity, finished and complete within itself. A text's
meaning is not a structure "in there" somewhere to be figured
out by appeals to an external principle or truth-finding meth-
od of finding. To approach a text this way is to participate
mindlessly in the perpetuation of maladaptive thinking and
living produced by the very distortions deconstruction could re-
veal. Instead, deconstruction approaches a text from the pre-
mise that it necessarily contains elements that, subjected to
the deconstructionist critique, will untangle the web (Bressler,
1994).
The textual element that most concerns deconstruction is
the hierarchical form of relationships referred to as a "binary
opposition" (Berger, 1995). Examples are MIND-body, WHITE-
black, MEN-women, SCIENCE-art, and so forth. In a binary
opposition, one element is considered—speciously—superior
to the other. The uppercase letters indicate the binary
member usually assumed to be superior. Deconstructionists
often use the terms "privileged" and "marginalized" to
describe the asymmetry of the binary opposition relationship.
For example, we could say that in a school curriculum that
devotes a preponderant amount of time and resources to
instruction in science and technology, the school "privileges"
science and "marginalizes" other subjects. The inattentive
generally regard the asymmetrical value inherent in the binary
opposition as common sense or the natural order of things.
The binary opposition is an identity-forming relationship
(Kvale, 1992). It is not simply a juxtaposition of two entities,
one of which happens to be naturally superior to the other in
some way. The identity-formation property of the binary
opposition is based on the condition that each member of the
relationship derives part of its characteristic qualities from the
presence of the opposing member. One member uses the other
for what we might call "metaphysical traction." For example,
in the opposition souND-silence, both members are jointly
218 Critical Art Pedagogy

required to make each other meaningful. A lonely silence may

be relieved by music. Conversely, a barking dog or off-key
violin playing can make silence a joyous serenity.
The binary opposition occupies a forceful place in
thought, culture, and every dimension of lived experience. It
gives rise to hierarchies of value and power that produce distor-
tions in ways humans think, perceive, and interact. Binary
oppositions form the hierarchies that deconstruction
identifies, contests, and subverts. Identifying binary opposi-
tions in a text—whether visual, linguistic, auditory, gestural or
eurythmic—constitutes critical deconstruction's primary task.
Derrida has focused close attention on two particular
binary oppositions, SPEECH-writing and PRESENCE-absence,
hierarchies he considers fundamental distortions of Western
philosophy. They present paradigm cases of binary opposi-
tions that have distorted our knowledge systems tacitly but
pervasively. Derrida based his deconstruction of Western
philosophy on analyses and the decentering of these two
relationships.
Speech, Derrida believes, becomes illegitimately privileged
over writing because of assumptions attendant upon the fact
that the speaker is physically present in at least one
perceivable way and the writer is physically absent. He has
attacked the position that presence implies a fixed reference
point for the origination of meaning and an immediacy
tantamount to reality. B y extension, one can question
whether the speaker, as the author of speech, is present in the
sense that his or her intentions arrive in pure form. In the
presence of the speakers, speech is assumed (improperly) to
be unmediated and undistorted by any vehicle for communi-
cation. Writing, on the other hand, is implicitly considered an
inferior source of truth in traditional knowledge systems
because it uses symbols and, therefore, constitutes a
potentially less-than-objective representation of thought in
its original form. Writing—for example, journalism—is con-
sidered more subject to bias than the spoken testimony of an
eyewitness (Berger, 1995).
The bias of the PRESENCE-absence hierarchy, and the
primary bias of Western philosophy, then, is the treatment of
presence as a fixed center, an incontrovertible, self-evident
Semiotics, Deconstruction, and Qualitative Methodology 2 1 9

identity that operates beyond the semiotic interplay in which

meaning is constructed. Tradition further (wrongly) assumes
that this center needs no interpretation because it exists in
itself. Beyond the vagaries of language, the center is assumed
to offer a position external to the constant interplay of
signifiers and signifiers.
The erroneous assumption that the present offers an ex-
ternal center from which to construct fixed meaning or
absolute truth is called "logocentrism" in the language of de-
construction (Colapietro, 1993). This logocentric orientation
provides its adherents with the means to construct hierarchies
that tacitly privilege their status and power. The mythical
protected center or position that logocentrism installs
external to signs and language is called the "transcendental
signified" (Berger, 1995). It is "the last word." It is the
signified that never needs a signifier because it is always self-
evident. It is the position from which absolute truth is
ascertained and authorized. It is the cosmic baseline. It is also
deconstruction's target.
Derrida rejected the concept of a transcendental signified,
committing instead to the idea that meaning is constructed
through the interplay of signs. He argued against the
transcendental signified because in the teeming interplay of
signs, signifiers become signifieds in a continuing stream. This
rejection of logocentrism and the concept of the tran-
scendental signified became the basis for the deconstructionist
principle that a text may have multiple meanings but no
single, inherent, true interpretation for the reader-viewer to
discover (Bressler, 1994).
"Episteme," another concept of deconstruction, refers to
speciously certain knowledge based on the assumption of the
transcendental signified or the apparent human need for a
center that provides a mirage of absolute truth or final
interpretation. In terms of critical art pedagogy, episteme is
analogous to the canon and the archive, respectively—which
is to say, the official knowledge about art and the official list
of the best art objects.
Derrida and others often refer to the transcendental
signified as a "center." A better metaphor for critical
pedagogy purposes would have been "vertex." The vertical
220 Critical Art Pedagogy

dimension reflects the importance of hierarchies in decon-

struction. Hierarchies seem to be consistently visualized as
vertical orderings with the best or most powerful at the
vertex. Verticality in art and religion is also an important
symbolic convention that can lend understanding to issues
that critical art pedagogy and deconstruction confront. In
human terms, center is a synecdoche. It implies an inner part
or core or essence within the self or personality that
determines what the overall being does. Thus, the center is a
trope with crypto-psychological connotations better avoided.
Deconstruction, meanwhile, finds traditional psychology un-
comfortable because it reduces human thought, behavior,
value, emotion, and other dimensions to units of analysis that
preclude an understanding of the importance of the workings
of signs to the human condition (Colapietro, 1993).
In his 1967 work, O n G r a m m a t o l o g y , Derrida referred to
the constant interplay of signs as " a r c h i - e c r i t u r e " which tran-
slates from the French as "arche-writing" (Colapietro, 1993;
Bressler, 1994). Signs are generated in arche-writing and
become meaningful by way of their differences with other
signs. For example, the words "cat" and "bat" differ by only
one sign, the initial letter. This difference is meaningful in
both spoken and written forms of the words. Arche-writing,
the creation of signs through their differences, operates in
both spoken and written language; and in each domain, the
processes of encoding signs includes differentiating them
according to their respective distinctive features. In each
domain, this encoding of signs must take place for any
meaning to be communicated.
Written signs, Derrida observed, may be more apparent
than the arche-writing of spoken language; nevertheless, as a
semiotic process, spoken language requires the interpretation
of signified-signifier relationships, that, like semiosis in
writing, were initially formed in arbitrary ways and by conven-
tions. Therefore, deconstruction holds that spoken signs
enjoy no more claim to being true representations of the
objects or concepts they signify than written signs can claim.
Observing the involvement of semiosis and arche-writing in
both forms of language, deconstruction considers writing no
more a faded copy or a derivative form of speech than the
Semiotics, Deconstruction, a n d Qualitative Methodology 221

spoken form. From the perspectives of semiotics and decon-

struction, confidence has been egregiously misplaced in the
assumption so deeply embedded in our acculturated conscious-
ness that speech is the primary form of meaning production
because a speaker's presence guarantees ultimately accurate
meaning production. The authorship of true meaning assigned
to speakers is spurious because it excludes the listener-sign
receiver from the act of interpretation. The SPEECH-writing
binary opposition that deconstruction finds so problematic in
Western philosophy awards the privilege of authorizing
meaning to the speaker; the listener is consigned to the
passive role of sign receiver rather than the role of interpreter
and constructor of meaning.
From the deconstructionist perspective, the interrelated
binary oppositions, SPEECH-writing and PRESENCE-absence,
reflect a human tendency to seek absolutes and to create them
when they are not readily apparent (Berger, 1995). One such
contrived absolute is the impression that the self is stable and,
therefore, the ultimate center of meaning. Most of us con-
ceive of our selves as the center of our consciousness of
immediate experience. This impression "privileges" immedi-
acy in the text of conscious experience the same way that
PRESENCE and SPEECH become privileged. This concept of self is
another of the hierarchies deconstruction tries to subvert.
Derrida resisted the idea that a text contains a structure
that provides ultimate or summary meaning. He extended this
elemental skepticism even to deconstruction itself (Norris,
1991). One of the forms this skepticism takes is a reluctance
to provide a definitive, precise meaning, the way positivist
science does, for deconstruction terminology. In fact, Derrida
and other deconstructionist writers and critics have become
notorious for neologisms, word play and puns, and generally
assaulting the pomposity of academic and intellectual langu-
age. Derrida's concept of differance is an example.
Wordplay notwithstanding, differance is an important idea
in deconstruction. The word is a misspelling neither in English
nor French. It derives from two homonymic French verbs.
One is d i f f e r e r , meaning "to defer;" the other is d i f f e r e r ,
meaning "to be different or non-equivalent, or to disagree." In
the French language, the noun form of dijferer, difference, is
222 Critical Art Pedagogy

correctly spelled with the e in the suffix. The a in the suffix of

Derrida's differance indicates that some intentionally anoma-
lous meaning lurks in the neologism.
As we noted earlier, Derrida accepted the semiotic
principle that the differences in signs are their distinctive
features that figure in the very identification of signs as signs
and in the interpretation of their meanings. Y o u saw the
examples "cat" and "bat." But this single meaning provides
only half the explanation. The other meaning of d i f f e r a n c e ,
"to defer or hold in abeyance," supplies a second strand of
meaning. Derrida intended to call attention to the rejection of
the logocentric assumption of absolute meaning or truth inde-
pendent of contextually encountered relationships between
signifiers and signifieds. He defers closure on final meaning in
all interpretations, even deconstruction. Deconstruction itself
holds absolute truth or summary meaning in continual
abeyance (Bressler, 1994).
Derrida played with the term differance at another level.
The meanings of its roots, the two versions of the verb
differer, are unstable. Their meanings cannot be distinguished
from the spoken word alone. The spoken word differ er, there-
fore, contains no self-evident meaning or means by which it
can be decoded as a speech sign. It must rely on other signs for
its interpretation. One must infer its meaning from context or
further explanations. Context and further explanations are
continuations of signification, the interplay of signs in which
signifiers become signifieds. This wordplay reveals and under-
scores the fallacy of instituting the privilege of speech over
writing. Bressler (1994) suggested that the key to under-
standing the significance of differance in deconstruction is to
consider d i f f e r a n c e as the hypothetical question, What i f
there is no transcendental signified?
The answer is that without the external source of verifica-
tion supplied by the presumed existence of the transcendental
signified, binary oppositions would be reversible. The basis for
an absolute standard on which to construct a hierarchy of
value would disappear. With no transcendental signified to
establish an illusion of coherence, meaning and knowledge
become relational—that is, defined by a process in which what
is known becomes knowledge according to how it relates to
Semiotics, Deconstruction, and Qualitative Methodology 223

and is distinguished from other things that are known. Knowl-

edge becomes defined as such in relation to other knowledge.
No self-verifying knowledge or privileged perspective exists
from which to identify truth.
It overstates matters to call deconstruction a method, at
least in the sense that a method is a set of precisely defined
procedures or a linear sequence of predetermined steps to
follow to produce a predetermined outcome. Nor is deconstruc-
tion a bounded set of tenets, or a formal, systematic, doctrine
of codes. It is more of an attitude or an approach arising from
the foregoing ideas. It is more like historiography than sta-
tistics.
Among those who adopt deconstruction, certain concepts,
beliefs, and assumptions guide the formation of questions and
inquiries undertaken to answer them. In contrast to the
parochial consistency of statistical formulas, the ideas of
deconstruction may appear as variations on a theme when
applied in different contexts by different individuals. Decon-
structionist ideas are dispersed throughout the writings of
Derrida and others, not compiled in neat lists. In fact,
deconstruction is still emerging as a methodological orienta-
tion, but it does not aspire to a unified manifesto or treatise
defining it as an objective method of truth discovery.
Attempts to summarize the ideas of deconstruction as
methodological orientation or attitude paint a fairly con-
sistent picture, but the caveat persists that one cannot expect
a comprehensive, orthodox, party line. This property helps
make deconstruction compatible with critical theory and
critical art pedagogy.
The initial step in a critical deconstruction is to acknowl-
edge several assumptions. One is that texts have plural
meanings or interpretations but no single correct interpreta-
tion or ultimate meaning. The task of the interpreter (the
reader-viewer-listener) is neither to discern the author's
intentions nor to discover the correct meaning in the struc-
ture of the text. A second assumption is that text interpreters
create the meanings. Meanings are not the independent,
objective properties of texts. A third assumption, as in
semiotics, is that language is a system of arbitrary and con-
ventional signs instead of a mimetic representation of the
224 Critical Art Pedagogy

world. In this sign system, signifieds can become signifiers.

Fourth, deconstruction requires the rejection of the myth of
absolute truth, contrary to the human tendency to assume
transcendental signifieds. In place of absolute truth, decon-
struction posits a relational knowledge developed through
differance and the interplay of signs. Finally, deconstruction
acknowledges that problematic structures exist in language
that result in hierarchies, asymmetrical power relationships,
binary oppositions, and other maladaptive features that dis-
tort human values and experience (Bressler, 1994).
With these theoretical orientations in place, a decon-
structionist calls into question all hierarchical relationships,
especially the binary oppositions. As we saw earlier, binary
oppositions are not dichotomies composed of more or less
equal elements that happen to be the mirror image of one
another. Instead, binary oppositions express a two-item
hierarchy with one term privileged and the other term mar-
ginalized, suppressed, silenced, or excluded. Critical theory
recognizes these as objects of critical consciousness and ori-
gins of social injustice.
Deconstruction goes beyond efforts to simply reverse the
polarity of binary oppositions. It recognizes that the privi-
leged element in the binary opposition necessarily contains
traces of the purported inferior or derivative element. As the
SOUND-silence example revealed, the privileged term in a
hierarchical relationship is partly defined by the nature of the
term positioned as inferior. This trace or hidden contingency
is the force within the binary opposition that inevitably leads
to its own unraveling. Berger (1995) called this unraveling
"self-betrayal."
Deconstruction then enters a third phase defined by the
task of describing or revealing how this unraveling process pro-
ceeds (Bressler, 1994). To accomplish this end, it focuses on
the operations of language as a sign system and on the para-
doxical property of a text's binary oppositions—namely, that
they furnish the very tools by which one can expose their
distorting relationships. The machinations of d i f f e r a n c e
operating ineluctably within a text help decenter or destabilize
binary oppositions so that they can be identified, analyzed,
and subverted by rejecting the implications of their tran-
Semiotics, Deconstruction, and Qualitative Methodology 225

scendental signifieds and forming alternative interpretations.

In this phase, a deconstructionist often examines the margina-
lia of a text. Traditional critics tend to regard the seemingly
insignificant drolleries around the edges less as elements of a
text than as secondary elements. These secondary elements
receive inferior roles as a consequence of the tacit assumption
of transcendental signifieds. This process amounts to the
formation of binary oppositions.
The margins of a text often reveal possibilities for
alternative interpretations by exposing how a sub rosa depen-
dence on what it suppresses or excludes diminishes the myth
of privilege. The margins are the ground against which one
can contrast the privileged figure. Deconstruction approaches
the binary opposition as a silhouette and illuminates its rela-
tionship with its background so that many shades of gray
emerge to render the picture in full tonality.

An Example: Deconstructing Landscape Photography

A deconstruction of the landscape as an artistic genre, especial-
ly with respect to the landscape as wilderness, illustrates the
potential of deconstruction as a foundation for critical art
pedagogy. The landscape is, of course, a major genre in art,
particularly in photography. Landscape is also a construct, a
contrivance we use to reflect and form our experience in the
world. Deconstructing the ways we use this construct in art
leads to dangerous knowledge that implicates our tendency to
idealize nature in a number of negative consequences.
In Gothic art, the land served basically as background filler
for pictorial denotation of more singular subject matter.
suBJECT-background, a prominent binary opposition, pervades
the history of the landscape genre in art. The ubiquitous
altarpieces and religious panels in European art offer many
examples. Hubert and Jan Van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece
(1432) depicts only blue sky behind the human figures on one
of its side panels and includes the land as only a minimal
presence in the background on a reverse panel. The land is
also marginalized in their C r u c i f i x i o n : The L a s t Judgment
(1420-25), which relegates the land to background through
the use of the painterly techniques of sfumato and atmos-
pheric perspective. The Van Eycks' use of foreshortened
226 Critical A r t Pedagogy

perspective draws the viewer s attention emphatically to the

figures in the foreground. The implication is that human
affairs and the land coincide very little. Another implication,
one ensuing from religious influences, is that earthly matters
are to be de-emphasized because they are part of a transitory
stage eminently less suitable for humans than the idealized
depictions of Heaven that appear in art works. Nature,
symbolized by the land, has little to do with humans; humans
are not really a part of nature. Projecting this implication, art
fortified the theology of the times, which considered life on
earth mere preparation for everlasting life in Heaven. The
history of the landscape genre is rife with binary oppositions
like these.
During the Renaissance, the land began to emerge from
the background as a subject in its own right. Artists suggested
an elemental relationship between the land and human beings.
Land became landscape. The landscape, in turn, came to be
depicted as a place more appropriate for human beings. Hu-
manism resurfaced as a guiding light illuminating the land and
humanity's place in it. Domenico Ghirlandaio's A n O l d M a n
a n d H i s G r a n d s o n (1480) includes a window which looks out
on a highly detailed and fantastic landscape, signaling a com-
ing change in the artistic treatment of the landscape. In
Pietro Perugino's The D e l i v e r y of t h e Keys (1482), which
hangs in the Sistine Chapel, the setting is crucial. Christ
delivers the keys to the kingdom of heaven to St. Peter, the
first pope. The setting is a vast piazza featuring two Roman
triumphal arches and a domed cathedral that resembles
present-day St. Peter's Basilica.
Later, the landscape continued to receive greater atten-
tion and treatment, and it figured more prominently as a for-
mal element in compositions. Subsequently, it began to take
on symbolic significance as well. Giovanni Bellini's St. F r a n c i s
i n Ecstasy (1485) depicts St. Francis of Assisi after receiving
assurance of salvation. He has just emerged from a long fast in
a darkened hermitage to re-enter in ecstasy a world of beauty
and order. In contrast to the conventions used earlier in
Gothic art, the subject, the ecstatic St. Francis, occupies only
a small portion of Bellini's composition. The land and the
figure are both important elements in the painting. The land-
Semiotics, Deconstruction, and Qualitative Methodology 2 2 7

scape in Bellini's painting suggests that nature is God's work

and its beauty should be joyfully praised and acknowledged in
religious and secular contexts. The landscape had become a
holy site for human beings.
A strong political thread runs throughout the history of
the landscape genre, particularly in photography in the United
States. In the nineteenth century, Timothy O'Sullivan,
Alexander Gardner, and other intrepid photographers explored
the American West, bringing back images that propelled the
manifest destiny concept instrumental in the settlement of
the frontier. Later, the photographs of Yosemite by William
Henry Jackson were persuasive visual support for the establish-
ment of the National Park System. Ansel Adams' dramatic
landscapes called widespread attention to environmental
issues. Along with traditional landscapes in other media, much
of this photographic work is of great aesthetic value and
social interest. Likewise, the sites where this landscape art was
made often inspire overwhelming experiences of beauty. But
from the perspective of deconstruction, the issue of beauty in
nature revealed through landscape art is rather more complex.
These changes in the artistic treatment of the land
coalesced to become the landscape genre; and as this genre
emerged, it raised certain implications that eventually came to
be recognized as problematic in both art and the context of
human values. One of these was the tacit assumption that
beauty is a stable property intrinsic in nature. This assumption
inspired artists working in the landscape genre to idealize the
landscape as a repository for nature's beauty sustained in
objective, physical form. Painterly skills, tropes and artistic
conventions notwithstanding, beauty was "out there" in
nature. Through the idealized vision of the landscape genre,
beauty in nature became reified as a spectacle separate from
lived experience "in here." The tacit positioning of beauty as
a property inherent in nature became, in the terminology of
deconstruction, a "transcendental signified." The landscape
became a center for determining absolute truth, or more pre-
cisely, the absolute truth of beauty in nature. In a critical
deconstruction of art, the substitution of the term "vantage
point" for "center" for determining truth would be more
appropriate.
228 Critical Art Pedagogy

American landscape photography idealized nature and

glorified the concept of wilderness as the prototypical locus of
beauty. Photographs of heroic, monumental landscapes can
continue their historically beneficial role of creating a
reverence for the environment that, in turn, promotes the un-
derstanding that environmental protection is a vital public
issue. But deconstruction applied in the context of critical art
pedagogy deepens this understanding. We understand that the
artistic idealization of the landscape creates a binary opposi-
tion that shapes or constructs our attitudes toward and con-
cepts of the environment in problematic ways.
One key concept in developing a deeper understanding is
that photography is not evidence. This is to say, a photo-
graph is not objective truth, captured and delivered by an
omniscient glass eye in a mechanical box and visually recorded
by an unbiased chemical process (Sontag, 1977; Barthes,
1981). Seeing is not necessarily believing. Photography's
possibilities extend beyond its unparalleled capacity for mime-
sis. Photography offers polysemy, not proof. A photograph is
a text, the meanings of which derive from interpretations of
the interplay of signs that resist a summary explication.
Photography, instead, offers the photographer numerous
stylistic options that mean the photographer-author can cre-
ate special emphases by selecting content, composing formal
elements in certain ways, and employing technical manipula-
tions. The traditional heroic landscapes of Ansel Adams and
Eliot Porter suggest an invulnerable, immutable, a self-sustain-
ing, monumental, heroic wilderness inherently protected from
human depredations and encroachment by its remoteness and
self-evident beauty so transcendentally sublime that it must
never be transgressed. Robert Adams (1981) argued that the
tradition within the landscape genre of glorifying wilderness as
the unique site of beauty in nature has actually lulled people
into a false security about the environment. The widespread
myth of photography as a denotative, objective medium
which is but an inchoate vehicle for visual reality reinforces
this impression. We tend to treat the camera as a miniature
photocopier, purveying only faithful, truthful facsimiles.
You can see, therefore, how deconstruction could become
an invaluable conceptual instrument in critical art pedagogy.
Semiotics, Deconstruction, and Qualitative Methodology 2 2 9

Deconstruction contests myths and illuminates how they

operate through covert social and political implications
submerged in the conventions of the traditional practices of
landscape art, our example here. With its infusion of semio-
tics and deconstruction, critical art pedagogy recognizes the
connotative dimensions of photography's signification. A c -
knowledging the ambiguity of photography can be difficult
because a confidence in its documentary functions has been so
efficiently acculturated that almost everyone now assumes
that the photograph is a value-free medium conveying objec-
tive truth.
A critical praxis in art adopts the goal of actualizing
particular embodiments of natural beauty in art, rather than
capturing or representing beauty as a property of nature.
Critical art pedagogy can mount an interrogation of tradi-
tional landscape art that reveals for students and others how
the idealized landscape is implicated in our interactions with
nature, especially those economically and environmentally
exploitive interactions.
This project entails a departure from the traditional scenic
calendar shot or postcard photograph. Take for example John
Pfahl's 1991 photographic exhibition and accompanying
book, A D i s t a n c e d L a n d : The P h o t o g r a p h s of J o h n P f a h l . His
work illustrates a successful push beyond the limitations of the
traditional landscape genre to critical practice in art. Pfahl's
subjects—power plants, factories, and their billowing clouds of
smoke—presumably present a toxic assault on the environ-
ment. He took the technical approach of a traditional land-
scape photographer, ironically situating the factories and
power plants as monumental presences in natural settings
reminiscent of Ansel Adams' photographs. Pfahl's images
also recall Steiglitz's E q u i v a l e n t s , a series of photographs of
clouds set against skies beyond. In fact, Pfahl's images are
quite beautiful in the abstract. But the discrepancy between the
content and his use of traditional techniques for depicting
natural beauty in landscape photography shifts the meaning of
his work from the glorification of nature to our neglect of the
environment.
As a foundation for critical praxis in art and art pedagogy,
deconstruction approaches the landscape as a text composed,
230 Critical A r t Pedagogy

like all texts, of signs. These signs, like all signs, legitimately
assume multiple meanings. These meanings, like all meanings,
do not depend on a single author-artist. Communication, even
including communication in the modalities of visual art, re-
quires an interpreter-viewer-reader. Thus, we cannot assume
beauty—like its counterparts absolute truth, final interpreta-
tion, and summary meaning—to be self-evident or to operate
beyond the interplay of signs. In the text of landscape, signs
must become animate in experience to be interpreted as
beauty. Beauty is a process, an activity suffused with the inter-
play of signs.
Remember that deconstruction does not deny the pos-
sibility of the experience of beauty in nature or anywhere else.
Instead, its goal is to show how we take the experience of beau-
ty for granted, and how distorted assumptions about beauty
can lie beneath its surface.
As the landscape genre sought to access beauty in nature,
the distinction grew more marked between sites of lived experi-
ence and the idealized visions of nature "out there" portrayed
in landscape art. The ineffable, the sublime, the exalted in
landscape art contrast forcefully with the ordinary, the com-
monplace, the mundane, and the undifferentiated tedium of
quotidian reality. Mirroring Derrida's PRESENCE-absence, the
binary opposition THERE-here becomes a perturbing factor in
landscape art. Nature is split by the binary opposition the
problematic concept of beauty produces. This re-ordering of
nature into a hierarchy has also produced the wilderness
construct which, in association with the concept of beauty, is
implicated in a number of serious contemporary problems,
especially environmental crises.
This root hierarchy in landscape art has many variations:
REMOTE-accessible, NOVEL-familiar, NATURAL GRANDEUR-banali-
ty, PICTURESQUE T E R R A I N TO PRESERVE-wasteland to exploit,
NATURE-urban environment, and N A T U R E WHERE H U M A N S ARE
FOREIGNERS-nature where humans are interested partners.
Barry Lopez (1990) described the binary opposition impli-
cit in the concept of wilderness as HOLY GROUND-profane
ground. As one of its deleterious consequences, the myth of
wilderness invites the ruinous exploitation of the profane
grounds. Since profane grounds tend not to be breathtakingly
Semiotics, Deconstruction, and Qualitative Methodology 231

beautiful spectacles of nature, they may be safely commodified

—that is, valued only for their economic utility. The tran-
scendental vantage point of wilderness as a special site of
beauty in nature suggests no need to protect profane ground,
especially when we have preserved national parks and special
areas we value for their beauty. Economic interests, then,
remain free to extract whatever resources avail themselves on
profane ground, sell them to consumers, and call it progress
with no harm to the environment, at least to the wilderness
and national park holy grounds.
Entrenched in the myth of wilderness, the construct "envi-
ronment" is a metonym for wilderness areas over there. The
concept of wilderness serves exploiters rather well. The more
remote a site is, the costlier it is to exploit. Extractive
industries like timber and coal often consider it good business
to support parks in wilderness areas. Setting aside only part of
the environment leaves the more accessible areas unprotected.
This entrenched binary opposition produces a number of
negative results. The popular idea of wilderness separates the
individual from the environment both aesthetically and in
other detrimental ways. Even as our own particular locale
loses value as an aesthetic site, the wilderness concept influ-
ences social, political and scientific dimensions. We are free to
neglect or ruin sites that are h e r e , reserving environments
T H E R E for protection and for aesthetic experience. A s an
ironic twist in our capitalist system, the privilege to exploit
the profane grounds goes to a relative few. The masses, on the
other hand, enjoy wide access to and receive enthusiastic
invitations to witness the spectacles of natural beauty in such
wilderness settings as national parks or vicariously through the
contrivances of media.
One facet of the wilderness concept that contributes to
the unraveling of its own myth (and to the physical un-
raveling of the environment) is the tendency of landscape art
and such media as postcards, coffee-table books, calendars,
travel posters, film, and television to portray natural beauty as
monumental or heroic. Heroic and monumental qualities
suggest invincibility. Thus, they pander to the popular con-
sciousness a confection: the specious assurance that nature is
strong enough to take care of itself no matter what happens.
232 Critical Art Pedagogy

Deconstructing the concepts of natural beauty and wilder-

ness as they appear in landscape art, we see how a critical art
pedagogy might assume an important educational role. From
our deconstruction of the wilderness concept emerges an
increased awareness of the need to re-examine the relation-
ship between human beings and the environment, which has
been that of consumer and commodity, whether the com-
modity is beauty in the wilderness or oil in the ground. The
critical deconstruction of the wilderness concept and of how
landscape art reconstructs the environment maladaptively
underscores the need to develop a comprehensive perspective
that supports enlightened management of all land, holy and
profane. Humans must develop the collective will (we already
possess the means) to co-exist as an integral part of nature,
within nature, not separate from it as remote, untouched
witnesses to its spectacle.
Employing deconstruction theory in ways exemplified
here, a critical art pedagogy can promote the return of the
concept of wilderness to the moral domain. As Lopez (1990)
pointed out, the technology for enlightened environmental
management is available. The problem is, our culture lacks a
broad base of moral commitment to the project. Critical art
pedagogy's approach to traditional expressions in the land-
scape genre can advance the project by encouraging teachers,
students, parents, curriculum designers, and administrators to
see art as, among other things, a visual storehouse of cultural
values. The approach of critical art pedagogy to traditional
landscape art can produce understanding of how the assump-
tions embedded in postcard-pretty scenes actually shape our
misconception of the environment and become implicated in
unhealthy environmental practices. We can hardly expect
traditional approaches to art education to achieve this out-
come.
Meanwhile, students can use the ideas that emerge from a
deconstruction-inspired critical pedagogy to produce art and
understandings through art that contest these assumptions and
the conditions that accompany them. For example, photo-
graphing locales that are ugly and marginalized, devalued as
potential landscapes might well become a project for critical
art production. B y studying the desert photographs of Mark
Semiotics, Deconstruction, and Qualitative M e t h o d o l o g y 233

Klett, the factory-scapes of John Pfahl, the urban landscapes

of George Tice, and the work of many other postmodern
artists, students can reconstruct possibilities for new art within
the landscape genre that nevertheless challenge the limits of
the tradition. In their own classrooms, students observe the
processes that surreptitiously shape their concepts o f and
attitudes toward the environment, beauty, ugliness, and corn-
modification. A s they unfold in the critical art classroom,
these revelations can form dangerous knowledge leading to a
commitment to connect with the environment in sustainable
ways. A critical art pedagogy can enact the critical aesthetic
values of sustainability, connectedness, and engagement as it
deconstructs and subverts the binary oppositions that riddle
the traditional landscape genre.

Implications of Deconstruction for

Critical Art Pedagogy
Among other purposes, critical art pedagogy sets out to
challenge students and teachers to create dangerous knowledge
about art and their art worlds. Dangerous knowledge, then, be-
comes a means to emancipation as it reveals and teaches re-
sistance to sources of suppression. Deconstruction supplies
critical art pedagogy with powerful conceptual instruments for
inducing dangerous knowledge, the most powerful being the
binary opposition. But to realize fully the potential of decon-
struction in critical art pedagogy, teachers and students must
first identify and subvert certain entrenched hierarchies or
binary oppositions that affect art and art education. Many
such relationships surround the arena of art and art pedagogy:
FORM-content, EXPERT-teacher, EXPERT-student, T E A C H E R - S U I -
dent,YALENT-interest,TALENT-work,IMTELLECT-imagination,IN-
TELLECT-Senses,SCIENCE-art,BASIC SKILL-art, PROFESSIONAL-
amateur, RULES A N D PROCEDURES-creative innovation, and FINE
ARTS-art in popular culture. No formal list yet exists. In fact,
one can find binary oppositions in all types of experiences
ranging from casual conversations among students or teachers
to personal reflections to sustained scholarly inquiry.
From the perspective of critical art pedagogy, one of the
most problematic binary oppositions is the privilege of verbal
knowledge over visual knowledge. As we noted earlier, a con-
234 Critical Art Pedagogy

notation of the term "logocentric assumption" plays an

important role in deconstruction theory as the putative center
from which absolute truth is presumed to emerge and which
thereby supplies the bases for numerous binary oppositions
and other asymmetrical power relations. Interestingly enough,
the denotation of the word "logocentrism" has provocative
implications for the application of deconstructionist thought
to critical art pedagogy. "Logocentric" translates literally as
"word-centered," and word-centeredness is the definitive
epistemological orientation of the traditional forms of
education. The constraint this orientation imposes on art and
on the project of teaching and learning about art takes the
form of a binary opposition that awards such abundant privi-
lege to verbal knowledge that other forms of knowledge are
overwhelmed. The logocentric hierarchy devalues the produc-
tion of all nonverbal forms of knowledge in schools, especial-
ly visual and artistic knowledge.
Rudolf Arnheim's (1969) term "visual thinking" is
familiar in art education venues, but it may not be fully under-
stood in the terms of critical consciousness. "Seeing is
believing" and " A picture is worth a thousand words," two
common-sense cliches, only superficially encourage confi-
dence in the plausibility of reversing the marginalization of
visual knowledge. These cliches raise misleading smoke
screens because of their tacit commitment to the fallacy of
mimesis, the assumption that art, or "true" visual knowledge,
should be—in fact, is—an exact visual replica of nature or
reality. Mimesis, the attempt to re-create in art the visual
appearance of observed reality, has endured in various mani-
festations from Greek art through the Renaissance to the
contemporary period in the forms of retrograde art that
exploits sentimentality and art that coheres with forces
interested in economic exploitation and the coercive preser-
vation of power. As an integral part of postmodern discourse
about art, thinkers such as Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes,
Susan Sontag, Umberto Eco, and many others have contested
the priority of linguistic knowledge over knowledge grounded
in the visual arts by systematically critiquing the mimesis tradi-
tion. As detailed earlier, even photography has been con-
vincingly revealed to be fundamentally subjective and meta-
Semiotics, Deconstruction, and Qualitative M e t h o d o l o g y 235

phorical despite its history of being regarded as a technology

capable of producing objective visual evidence. Its apparent
literalness is mere technical legerdemain we have learned to
interpret as objective visual truth. Mimesis has become a
habitual, common-sense mode of seeing and interpreting
pictures. Thus, critical art pedagogy must reveal and resist the
uncontested position of mimesis as a transcendental vantage
point (or a transcendental signified) from which to judge both
visual truth and aesthetic or artistic value.
Interestingly enough, technology itself contributes to the
dismantling of mimesis and the subversion of the binary op-
position that privileges verbal over visual knowledge. In the
past decade, we have witnessed technological developments in
digital imaging that have produced dramatic changes in how
we read images as texts. Such relatively inexpensive software
programs as Adobe Photoshop® allow anyone with only
moderately sophisticated computer knowledge to alter and
completely rearrange photographic images. Parts of one
image can be juxtaposed with parts of another. A n image can
be altered in many ways to emphasize one element or de-
emphasize another. Faces can be darkened or lightened; waist-
lines altered; figures transported to landscapes they have never
seen.
It does not concern critical art pedagogy that we can now
accomplish these manipulations. In fact, they are not really
new in artistic photography. Jerry Uelsmann has been pro-
ducing surrealistic photo-collages since the 1960s, and
surrealist artist Man Ray exhibited photographic art fifty
years ago that anticipated some of these developments. Pedro
Meyer and other digital artists working primarily with images
derived from photography have radically transformed the
function of the photography by deconstructing and recon-
structing its formal elements. As a variant of the collage or
montage genre, this art takes its place in a long history,
though the verisimilitude the new digital art achieves is un-
precedented.
In fact, the crucial point is that digital manipulations of
the formal stylistic elements of images appear to be precise.
They look so "real" because they exploit the ways we have
learned to interpret visual texts and evaluate them as truth.
236 Critical Art Pedagogy

The codes we glean from our art world provides the means to
interpret them. Recent art produced by digitally manipulating
photographic images oddly juxtaposes the certainty of visual
witness with conceptual skepticism. The cliche "Seeing is
believing" becomes "I see this, but it may not be real." As a
result, we can no longer take for granted the literalness of
photographs, i f we ever could. Digital imaging presents a
widespread legitimation crisis. The recognition that photo-
graphs present unreliable representations of reality formerly
circulated among only a small intelligentsia. Now, it is be-
coming common knowledge. Virtually everyone in the popu-
lar culture learns to doubt the adage, "Seeing is believing."
O f course, from the critical perspective, we realize that
photographs actually never were entirely truthful renderings.
They record subjective selections, and the transcendental van-
tage point for determining visual truth in photographs was
itself a mirage. The realizations emerging from a critical
appraisal of the new digital photographic art exemplify the ap-
plication of deconstruction to art and art learning. This
application also furnishes an example of the idea that the
privileged member of a binary opposition contains a trace of
its supplementary member. The binary opposition SCIENTIFIC
A N D TECHNOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE-art is so widely accepted that
it is practically a shibboleth in education and society. But
digital photographic art exploits contemporary computer
technology in order to produce disconcerting, perturbing,
fantastic, subtle illusions instead of the uncontestable cold,
hard truths once assumed to issue reliably from the domain of
scientific and technical objectivity. Consequently, this develop-
ment calls into question the visual terms of reality, objectivity
and truth. We can not trust even photographs anymore. The
SCIENTIFIC A N D T E C H N O L O G I C A L element's inevitable self-
betrayal thus undermines the hierarchical relationship of the
binary opposition.
The presence of deconstruction and semiotics among the
theoretical foundations of critical art pedagogy commits it
fully to the concept of the visual art object as text. A c -
cordingly, teachers and students must consciously reject ac-
culturated tendencies to look for the absolutes of the a r c h e -
d e s i g n and the a r c h e - a e s t h e t i c . A critical consciousness about
Semiotics, Deconstruction, and Qualitative Methodology 237

art includes the realization that the aesthetic value or the

meaning of an art object is neither self-evident nor held as an
objective property of that art object. From the critical per-
spective, art objects cannot supply the means of verifying
their own value, beauty, meaning, or truth. Critical art
pedagogy approaches the discernment and interpretation of
the value, beauty, or meaning of a particular art object as con-
textually situated rather than as stable properties of an inde-
pendent entity.
Critical art pedagogy also resists efforts to indoctrinate
students with the interpretations of those experts or authori-
ties who have been elevated to canonical status. Authorized or
official interpretations of meaning or artistic value may or
may not be useful. In contesting traditional scholarship in art
history, aesthetics, and criticism as single sources of meaning
and artistic value, we do not necessarily reject them outright
or suppress them in part. Nor does critical art pedagogy neces-
sarily dictate the rejection of certain materials—wood, for
example—because they play a part in producing the work of
the archive. In fact, traditional forms of knowledge can
illustrate how interpretations of a visual art text have changed
over time and are, therefore, subject to further change.
Students can come to understand that different conditions and
circumstances across a variety of social contexts influence art
interpretations. The understanding that art and knowledge
about art are subject to change promises to bolster students'
confidence in their own critical art making and knowledge
making.
In a certain sense, then, critical art pedagogy needs the
canon and the archive to provide contrast or conceptual
traction for its own ends. Deconstruction does not compel
critical art pedagogy to abandon the canon or archive as art
knowledge or art objects. Instead, critical pedagogy acknowl-
edges the historiography of the canon and archive, but refuses
to defer to their traditional privilege. The canon and the
archive are sets of texts. Critical art pedagogy disputes and de-
centers the concept of the canon's absolute authority and
privilege, not its content.
238 Critical Art Pedagogy

Qualitative Research Methodologies

Along with semiotics and deconstruction, qualitative research
methodologies offer significant possibilities for linking theory
and practice in the contexts of a critical art pedagogy. This
section surveys important aspects of the qualitative methodol-
ogies, and five general assumptions guide this survey. First,
research can benefit critical art pedagogy, a logical assumption
given our familiar critical perspectives on the nature of knowl-
edge: (1) that individual students and teachers evoke or create
knowledge as a process enacted at a particular time, situated in
a particular place; (2) that knowledge and values are in-
tegrated, not independent from one another; and (3) that a
theory-based epistemological orientation rejects knowledge as
absolute truth in favor of a concept of knowledge as con-
tinually evolving.
Second, the ultimate qualitative research subject is the
lived experience of its participants. Critical art pedagogy
shares this emphasis on lived experience especially through its
goal of encouraging students to acknowledge and legitimize
their own art worlds. Qualitative methodology's focus on lived
experience correlates with the knowledge-making and art-
making strands woven into critical art pedagogy. The special
focus of qualitative methodology brings an individual student's
lived experiences to the pedagogical surface. Critical art
educators refer to their students' lived experiences and incor-
porate them into the learning processes. Similarly, learning in
art, especially critical learning, literally requires students to
open their prior experiences and bring them into the
processes of interpreting meanings and making art objects.
Third, critical art pedagogy can benefit from qualitative
research to the extent that the research remains a more or
less accessible public discourse. Critical art pedagogy can
benefit least from forms of research that prescribe decon-
textualized, impersonal, abstract sequences of a p r i o r i steps
toward specified outcomes that anesthetize students and
teachers by disengaging them from active art making and
knowledge making. Critical art pedagogy sees research and re-
search products as narratives or texts with multiple interpre-
tations possible. Qualitative research methods complement
this orientation.
Semiotics, Deconstruction, and Qualitative Methodology 2 3 9

Another assumption, the fourth, needs to be continually

tested: the idea that forms of qualitative research can achieve
or promote critical ends. Qualitative research is far from in-
herently critical. Critical art educators need constantly to
critique those of their activities guided by qualitative research
methods and products by asking the fundamental critical ques-
tion: A m I making dangerous knowledge and promoting eman-
cipatory ends? Qualitative research methods and products can
guide teachers and students in analyzing what happens in their
pedagogical environment.
Fifth, i f indeed critical art pedagogy is to include a re-
search base, qualitative research, given its characteristics and
concerns, is simply more rewarding than quantitative research.
The discussion here avoids a grand refutation of quantitative
research methods, even though quantitative methods have
been overused and misapplied in many areas of education and
the social and behavioral sciences. They can, however, be
beneficial i f used appropriately. Certain questions and expec-
tations belong exclusively to each method, and these questions
and expectations will emerge as our survey continues.
In his essay, The T w o C u l t u r e s a n d t h e S c i e n t i f i c R e v o l u -
t i o n , C P . Snow (1964) distinguished between two fundamental-
ly different sources of knowledge: the "scientific world" and
the "literary world." Snow argued that one should fully
acknowledge the differences between the two but regard them
as providing equally valuable ways of understanding human
affairs. Noting that adherents in each domain tend to regard
the other as inferior, Snow advocated a rapprochement. His
differentiation of "two cultures" aptly applies to research
methodologies in education and the social sciences. We have
an analogous contemporary nomenclature. Snow's scientific
world became "quantitative research," and his literary world
became "qualitative research." Whether the two worlds co-
exist in parallel, equally valuable forms in educational research
and, i f so, whether there can or should be a rapprochement
remain controversial questions. Bogdan and Biklen (1982),
Goetz and LeCompte (1984), Hatch (1985), and Lincoln and
Guba (1985) have all contended that qualitative and quanti-
tative research methodologies present separate paradigms,
each with its own set of philosophical foundations, assump-
240 Critical Art Pedagogy

tions, methods, goals and applications. They also contend

that integration of the two is neither desirable nor possible.
Even more recently, many teachers, administrators, parents
and other potential consumers-practitioners of educational
research have come to realize that forms of qualitative
research can invaluably increase and enrich our education
knowledge. Some go even further, believing that the qualita-
tive paradigm offers far more than the quantitative, a belief
particularly prevalent among those interested in critical peda-
gogy.
While the merits of qualitative methods relative to quanti-
tative methods promise to inspire debate for a long time, a
dramatic increase has appeared in the numbers of qualitative
studies reported in professional journals and at conferences.
Moreover, the knowledge of, i f not a total acceptance of, the
nature of qualitative research methodology has become more
widespread among educators at all levels.
This section addresses the possibilities and implications of
qualitative research methodologies for critical art pedagogy by
reviewing the following six subjects: (1) definitions of
qualitative research, including alternative terms and contrasts
with quantitative research; (2) the philosophical foundations
and assumptions of qualitative methods and how they differ
from those of quantitative methods; (3) characteristics and
designs of qualitative research; (4) methods for evaluating
qualitative research; (5) a brief exploration of the history and
development of qualitative methodologies; (6) applying quali-
tative research in critical art pedagogy.

1. D e f i n i t i o n s of Q u a l i t a t i v e r e s e a r c h
Jacob (1987) suggested that the attempts to enunciate a
general definition of qualitative research covering all the
varied types has produced a confusion that has, in turn, dimin-
ished its legitimacy relative to the quantitative paradigm. This
diversity is evident in Bogdan and Biklen's (1982) definition
of qualitative research. They delineate its parts, characterizing
qualitative research as an umbrella term that subsumes a
number of strategies for knowledge making that happen to
share certain features. These features most often include par-
ticipant observation, lengthy interviews, case studies, field or
Semiotics, Deconstruction, a n d Qualitative Methodology 241

naturalistic research, ethnographic interests, inductive studies,

hermeneutics, symbolic interaction studies, and other meth-
ods, assumptions and concepts consistent with a phenomenolo-
gical orientation. While this approach has some merit, it
leaves undone the task of adequately describing the charac-
teristics and methodological subtypes.
Another approach to defining qualitative research is to
categorize it by the nature of the data that it uses. Bogdan and
Biklen (1982) described qualitative research methodology as
"soft." They used this term in no pejorative sense; instead,
they meant to contrast it with "hard data," the familiar des-
cription of the data of quantitative studies. Qualitative data
describe non-magnitude categories, properties and attributes of
the particular subject's experiences in his or her own terms.
Qualitative research uses data that describe the nature and
attributes of phenomena as human subjects experienced them.
Qualitative research generally avoids magnitudes. Quantitative
research, on the other hand, deals exclusively with one single
property of a variable—observations of it in terms of its mag-
nitude or numerical quantity. The variables in quantitative
research include categories, operationally defined constructs,
and concepts that can occur in varying magnitudes or
amounts. These magnitudes must be measured precisely and
conclusively, usually for the purposes of prediction and
control. Such variables are considered independent of human
experience.

2. P h i l o s o p h i c a l F o u n d a t i o n s of Q u a l i t a t i v e Research
A l l qualitative research strategies share a phenomenological
orientation. The major principle of phenomenology that
provides this common ground is that meaning, knowledge and
truth are relative and depend on the particular perspective of
the individual. Object perception provides a useful analogy.
Humans viewing a three-dimensional object see only that part
of the object consistent with or visible from their particular
place. The side of the object opposite the person is, of course,
invisible, and without moving, that person has no way to
attain absolute certainty about that part of the object. Any
knowledge about the invisible part is provisional. But moving
to another vantage point provides a new perspective and, ac-
242 Critical A r t Pedagogy

cordingly, new information about the object. From this new

perspective, formerly visible parts of the object become in-
visible. One cannot preclude the possibility that change occur-
red since one cannot perceive the object in its entirety all at
once. Any absolute, final knowledge about the nature of the
entire object remains unattainable. But a knowledge of the ob-
ject accumulates as a series of multiple perspectives. Believing
that knowledge is essentially provisional, phenomenologists
hold the expectation of absolute, final knowledge in abeyance.
Phenomenological researchers avoid any assumption that
they know what their subject-participants' experiences mean
in terms other than the subjects' own words. The researchers
decline to impose external concepts on their subjects' descrip-
tions of their own experiences.
The philosophers Edmund Husserl and Alfred Schutz were
instrumental in the development of phenomenology in the
nineteenth century, and one of their concepts most applicable
to critical qualitative research is verstehen, another phenome-
nological assumption concerning the nature of knowledge.
Verstehen refers to knowledge or understanding that focuses
on the meaning of human experience, especially in the
context of social interaction. This knowledge is essentially
interpretative in nature, verstehen implying knowledge of
human beings rather than the world of physical objects. The
two worlds cannot be understood in the same ways; each
requires different forms of inquiry for a researcher to achieve
optimal understanding. This tenet of phenomenology ex-
presses the widely held belief that research methods associated
with the physical sciences have been misapplied to inquiries
into human experience. Positivist inquiry seeks observable
facts in the context of social phenomena and tries to establish
causal relationships. The goal of phenomenological inquiry,
however, is less to establish causality than to understand
reality as the research subjects describe it. Qualitative
researchers are interested in subjectivity, and especially the
subjective worlds of people's lived experiences. The quali-
tative researcher seeks to enter this world. The subjective
world is characterized by multiple interpretations of lived
experiences through interaction with other people, and the
subjective, interpreted meanings of experience constitute the
Semiotics, Deconstruction, and Qualitative Methodology 243

nature of reality. Phenomenology asserts that people con-

struct reality within the context of social interaction rather
than discovers it contained in physical objects.
Lincoln and Guba (1985) described the philosophical
development of qualitative research methodologies as occur-
ring over three eras: the pre-positivist, the positivist, and the
post-positivist. The first phase includes the philosophers from
Aristotle to Hume, who died in 1776. Pre-positivism is
marked by Aristotelian influence expressed as rationalistic, pas-
sive observation of natural phenomena rather than such
active involvement or intervention as experimentation or
other empirical methods.
Lincoln and Guba identified Newton, Galileo, Descartes,
Kepler, and Copernicus as instrumental in the shift to the se-
cond era, positivism. Positivism, you will recall, implies a
disposition to place extremely high confidence in science and
the scientific method as means to establish truth. As a general
orientation toward the glorification of science, it has a long
history that extends beyond the scope of this discussion. But
"positivism" also refers to a school of philosophy that
advocated the application of scientific methods to questions
involving social phenomena. A s a school of philosophy,
positivism began in Europe in the nineteenth century with the
work o f Auguste Compte. It continued into the early
twentieth century through the work of the Vienna Circle, a
group of philosophers including Rudolph Carnap and Moritz
Schlick. B y this time, it had come to be known as "logical
positivism." The book Language, Truth, and Logic, by A J .
Ayer, is perhaps the best-known positivist manifesto. Its basic
proposition is that truth must be empirically verifiable, and
questions or hypotheses that are not empirically verifiable
amount to nonsense.
A vigorous critique of positivism is a philosophical founda-
tion central to all qualitative methodologies. Lincoln and Guba
(1985) described an interesting paradox in positivism. In
contrast to its aura of objectivity, positivism by no means
presents a unified, consistent set of philosophical principles
and research methods logically derived from them. Lincoln
and Guba found no universal consensus about what positivist
research methodology encompasses. Its domain is as diversi-
244 Critical Art Pedagogy

fled as the range of qualitative methodologies. The difference

is that the qualitative methodologies are consciously di-
versified and neither claim nor require objectivity, universal
consensus, or logical consistency. That positivist methodolo-
gy tacitly makes these claims contributes to its waning influ-
ence as a reliable form of knowledge making in education and
social affairs. With many other methodologists, Lincoln and
Guba believe that positivism is at once misleading and passe.
Contemporary critics of positivism also note that under
positivism's influence, research and inquiry proceed only in ac-
cordance with the scientific method, which, by nature is
limited to the narrow interests of prediction and control.
Verstehen and other legitimate forms of knowing are excluded.
The "theory-ladenness" of facts burden positivism with
yet another limitation. One of the functions of theory is to
determine which observations will be regarded as facts. Thus,
it is impossible to verify a theory with adduced facts that are
not themselves produced by a theory. The theory-fact inter-
dependence is analogous to an object's perceived color, which
to an extent is determined by the hue and intensity of the
light illuminating it. To view an object's "true" color, one
must eliminate the light; however, the "true" color is then
undetectable because without light, one cannot see the object.
A related positivist assumption is that facts can be value
free. Claims of the existence of value-free facts or objectivity
unravel before the theory-ladenness problem. Qualitative
research acknowledges, and indeed uses to advantage, the
concept of theory-ladenness. Its implications underscore the
provisional nature of facts and contextualize facts and values
as interdependent phenomena in human experience. Critical
qualitative research methodologies uphold the belief that the
concept of value-free facts is both untenable and undesirable.
The contemporary critique of positivist-based methodolo-
gies assails other assumptions or foundations of practice that
are discussed in more detail in the first chapter. But one of
these targets is operationalism, the positivist practice of
defining an abstract construct, concept or variable only in
terms of the measurable properties it entails. Take, for
example, this operational definition of quality in children's
art: the number of crayon marks outside the lines in a coloring
Semiotics, Deconstruction, and Qualitative Methodology 245

book. A related practice is reductionism, the belief that one

can reduce all phenomena to objective units of analysis subject
to a single set of principles or laws.
Still another of positivism's assailable assumptions, de-
terminism is a belief in causality so extreme that it precludes
free will. Critical thinkers reject linear causality and its various
permutations as instruments of absolute truth and treat them,
instead, simply as other elements in intellectual discourse that,
like all other elements, must continually demonstrate their
efficacy in the interpretation of meaning in relation to other
concepts.
Lincoln and Guba criticized positivism's countenance of re-
search methodologies that ignore essential aspects of subjects'
humanity. They found that the subjects of positivist research
often treated as objects with, typically, only a few narrowly
defined aspects of their lives considered as variables. Positivist
researchers typically decontextualize subjects from their
personal lives and re-define them in preconceived, one-dimen-
sional terms. Positivist research proceeds from the top down.
It installs a hierarchy with the researchers' interests privileged
over those of the subjects, who become, in effect, subject-
objects.
By contrast, qualitative forms of research, especially
those informed by the critical perspective, advocate the con-
cept of subject as participant. Participants can negotiate out-
comes and protect their own interests in qualitative research.
This response capability situates critical qualitative research in
the arena of "real life" or at least much closer to lived experi-
ence than the laboratory-like positivist methods situate it.
The proximity of inquiry of any type to "real life" affects
how useful or successful the results of that inquiry will be when
they are applied. This proximity-pragmatism relationship is
important in any type of inquiry; we call it "generalizability"
or "external validity." Validity is the operant word.
One important point in the contemporary critique of
positivism is its reliance on naive realism—that is, the belief
that a tangible reality "out there," separate from the in-
dividual, awaits discovery and analysis. This assumption
separates the knower from the known, a foundational aspect
of positivism critiqued more extensively in Chapter One.
246 Critical Art Pedagogy

Many adherents to the qualitative paradigm refer to today

as the "post-positivist era." The current interest in the pro-
mise of qualitative methodologies and their results arose from
dissatisfaction with the limitations of positivist-based quan-
titative forms of inquiry. In that sense, post-positivist
philosophy is reactionary. Lincoln and Guba (1982) charac-
terized the era of post-positivism as simply the reverse of
many of positivism's tenets. They acknowledged the "specu-
lative" and "provisional" nature of the new paradigm,
believing these to be complimentary terms suggesting a
rejection of the fallacies on which the old paradigm based its
quest for certainties and absolutes. This rejection freed qualita-
tive inquiry to examine lived experience in order to find
understanding and meaning. The examination then proceeded
unencumbered by an obsessive dedication to prediction and
control.
Other post-positivist characteristics include a commit-
ment to the view that reality takes shape in the presence of
social interaction, can and assume many forms, and resists
analytic fragmentation. Instead of causes and effects generaliz-
able to time-free and context-free applications, post-posi-
tivist research looks for working hypotheses in the lived
experiences of subject-participants. These working hypo-
theses describe the mutual shaping processes that determine
the construction of individual's realities. Post-positivist re-
searchers take values into account; they avoid ignoring them.
As you can see, new paradigm research differs markedly
from positivist forms of inquiry with regard to the treatment
of research subjects. Old paradigm quantitative inquiry im-
plicitly and explicitly treats subjects as objects. But Heron
(1981) identifies several empathic features of new paradigm
qualitative practices. First, he found researchers applying the
same rules, models, practices, conditions and assumptions to
subject-participants that they apply to themselves. This
reciprocity includes full disclosure of the purposes and impli-
cations of the results. In short, subjects remain actively
involved in the research process in crucial ways.
Moreover, regarding the qualitative assumptions and
practices involving subject-participants, qualitative research-
ers and their subjects employ the same terminology for com-
Semiotics, Deconstruction, and Qualitative Methodology 247

munication. Thus, researchers refrain from confusing profes-

sional or academic jargon designed to exclude listeners and
readers. Related to the shared-language rule, Heron noted the
stipulation that the truth of propositions or conclusions
should depend on values shared between researchers and fully
informed subject-participants. Ideally, the knowledge produced
by qualitative research includes the practical, subjective and
experience-based knowledge of subjects, not just the proposi-
tional academic knowledge of the researcher. The qualitative
researcher leading a conscientious inquiry will make certain
that the subject-participants' intended meanings correspond
to the researcher's interpretations. Finally, the simple rule
that subject-participants should not be exploited in any way is
the foremost principle guiding the treatment of qualitative re-
search subjects. This rule is, in fact, paramount in critical
qualitative research methodology and in critical pedagogy
everywhere.

3. Characteristics and Designs of Qualitative Research

In identifying the distinguishing characteristics of qualitative
research, one should note that this research assumes a wide
variety of forms and designs, and the degree to which any one
distinguishing feature may be present in a design will vary. In
qualitative research, the natural setting is the source of data,
and the researcher is the key data collection instrument. Since
context, sense of place, and setting all strongly influence a
person's experiences and behaviors, a researcher's direct, per-
sonal involvement and first-hand observation by the research-
er present the best means by which to arrive at meaningful
understanding of the phenomena under study.
Qualitative research is characterized by inductive proce-
dures and data analysis. Qualitative researchers usually formu-
late their questions as they experience and collect data, not
beforehand. Research questions emerge or reveal themselves
as the study progresses. One early variety of qualitative
methodology was called "grounded theory," terminology that
reinforces the bottom-up nature of the process (Glaser and
Strauss, 1967). Qualitative research takes place in the "real
world" as opposed to a laboratory-like setting. Specific hypo-
248 Critical Art Pedagogy

theses and a priori research questions are generally absent

from qualitative methodologies.
Qualitative research also evinces concern with meaning
more than proof, with relevance more than rigor, and with
process more than outcome. The data that qualitative re-
searchers focus on are their subjects' own perspectives,
thoughts, world views, assumptions, and any and all aspects of
their lived experiences relative to the phenomena under study.
Qualitative researchers use their subjects' own words or images
to describe their lived experiences. Qualitative research
accepts change as a natural part of the study phenomena.
Qualitative researchers often encounter causal relationships in
natural settings; but they resist the assumption that causality
is stable or independent of a particular context. Lincoln and
Guba (1985) referred to the qualitative methodology style of
hypothesis testing as "selection." They meant that qualitative
researchers sort through their data until they find naturally
occurring "experiments" that took place without artificial
contrivance. Relationships, causal and otherwise, between con-
cepts in these naturalistic experiments offer understanding and
meaning in qualitative research. Qualitative researchers
acknowledge that the understandings and meanings they
develop are tentative, and their interpretations are idiographic
—applicable only to the particulars of the study.
Qualitative researchers expect to encounter complex rela-
tionships operating in natural settings. While quantitative
experimentation involves reducing them or removing them
from the natural context, the qualitative paradigm assumes
that this practice changes their nature and meaning. Whereas
quantitative research aims at control by casting out variables
and any element that might introduce ambiguity, qualitative
methodology invites interference, variety, complexity and am-
biguity to the extent that they operate in the natural setting.
Qualitative research also uses the tacit knowledge of its
subject-participants. Tacit knowledge is the knowledge people
acquire through acculturation or socialization. Tacit knowl-
edge forms part of a subject-participant's constructions of the
reality and lived experience upon which a qualitative inquiry
focuses. Critical qualitative researchers realize that tacit
knowledge may often diverge from the official or authorized
Semiotics, Deconstruction, and Qualitative Methodology 249

knowledge. To determine the trustworthiness of their data in-

terpretations, qualitative researchers typically negotiate mean-
ings, understandings and outcomes with their subject-partici-
pants. In fact, findings, understandings and interpretations
must make sense to the subject-participants to achieve depend-
ability and credibility.
Lincoln and Guba (1985) noted an apparent paradox
inherent in planning or designing a qualitative study, which by
its nature is fluid, open-ended, and subject to change. Never-
theless, important components of naturalistic studies should
and must be carefully planned, and Lincoln and Guba enumer-
ated several phases of this planning process. In the first phase,
one determines the focus of the inquiry. Qualitative
researchers typically identify problems, programs, or policies
as focuses for study. Determining the focus of the inquiry
helps establish the boundaries and provide inclusion-exclusion
criteria for information and data. Researchers should antici-
pate that the focus could shift during the course of their study.
Another planning task is to determine the study's para-
digm fit, which means a researcher should make certain the
conceptualizations of phenomena to be studied are compatible
with the principles of the qualitative paradigm we just dis-
cussed. Specific questions might include these three: (1) Is the
phenomenon to be studied represented by multiple variables?
(2) To what degree are values involved? and (3) To what
degree is the presence of the researcher-participant liable to in-
fluence the phenomenon under study? The idea of a paradigm
fit implies the acknowledgment that some research questions
require qualitative inquiry for answers while other questions re-
quire quantitative investigation.
It is, of course, important to determine where and from
whom one plans to collect data. In quantitative research, we
call this "sampling," and it involves rigorously defined pro-
cedures crucial to the generalizability and credibility of the
research outcomes. Sampling procedures differ widely in
qualitative research, but they are just as rigorously defined and
as crucial to the outcomes as their quantitative counterparts.
Patton (1980) used the term "purposive sampling" for the
procedures qualitative inquiries use to determine where and
from whom data will be collected. Purposive sampling aims at
250 Critical Art Pedagogy

incorporating variety into a qualitative inquiry. A l l types of

cases in the natural setting should be included in the qualitative
study: the typical cases, the critical cases, the politically
important cases, the convenient cases, the difficult cases, and
so on. Furthermore, qualitative researchers continue to sample
until they begin to observe redundant information.
Another important planning task in the design of a qualita-
tive study is the ordering of the successive steps of the in-
quiry. The first step, gaining a general overview and orienta-
tion, requires the researcher to approach the subject-partici-
pants in an open-ended way so as to form a general idea of
what is salient and what phenomena, themes or concepts
might present themselves for further study. Spadley (1979)
called this step the "grand tour." The second step of a quali-
tative inquiry involves a more structured and more detailed
data collection centered on the phenomena identified in the
more general initial step. The third step in a qualitative
inquiry involves the corroboration. Researchers return to the
setting and negotiate meanings with subject-participants to
determine the accuracy and credibility of their findings, under-
standings and interpretations. We might call this step a
"reliability check."
In another planning task, a researcher must select his or
her instrumentation. The researcher is the primary instrument
in qualitative research, but an inquiry may involve a number
of assistant researchers, and one can organize them so as to
take advantage of their respective strengths, skills and
interests. Since the research is likely to be emergent, a re-
search designer needs to plan for frequent interaction and com-
munication between team members to analyze data, resolve
conflicts, make changes, check accuracy, and so on. More-
over, although the primary instrument in qualitative research
is the human being, other data collection and analysis instru-
ments may play subsidiary roles in the research process.
A closely related planning task involves providing for data
collection and recording modes. Given the emergent nature of
qualitative inquiry, researchers should plan to use several
different data collection techniques. Such techniques might in-
clude interviews, observations, field notes, photography or
videotaping, audio recording, unobtrusive measures, document
Semiotics, Deconstruction, and Qualitative Methodology 251

and record analysis, and others. Different techniques may

prove more useful at different stages of the inquiry.
A major issue to consider in planning data collection and
recording is fidelity: the data should reproduce what the
researcher observed. While audio and video recording offer
maximum fidelity, they also intervene obtrusively in the
natural setting. Many people who feel self conscious or threat-
ened in front of a camera or a microphone remain calm the
presence of someone who simply takes field notes. For this
reason, many qualitative researchers prefer field notes, indeed
find them more reliable and easier to use. Lincoln and Guba
(1985) also found that field notes tend to keep the researcher
involved and alert.
Planning data analysis procedures is another important
aspect of designing a qualitative study, even though emergent
insights can compel a change of plans. Data analysis should
occur at every stage of the study, especially during the data
collection phases. Data cannot be batch-processed all at once
as it so often is in quantitative research.
Planning the logistics of a qualitative study can be crucial
and should start at the very beginning along with fixing the
general focus of the inquiry, the site, researchers, and the sub-
ject-participants. Preliminary logistics planning includes a bud-
get, a schedule, an advisory board and peer debriefing and cri-
tique arrangements. The planning logistics involved in entering
the research setting can be complex. The lead researcher may
have to prepare a field kit for each assistant researcher, which
might include maps, notebooks, paper, and other tools. Plans
should also include arrangements for travel, housing and food;
the assignment of researchers to particular sites i f the study in-
volves multiple sites; and the assignment of specific responsi-
bilities to specific researchers. The planning must also ensure
frequent research team communication and cooperation as the
data collection and analysis proceed. The planning should in-
clude procedures for assembling and publishing a research report.
Finally, research designers should settle on procedures for
establishing the trustworthiness of the research. Indications of
or standards for trustworthiness might include credibility, trans-
ferability, dependability, and confirmability. Peer debriefing
and critiques by colleagues might also be included.
252 Critical Art Pedagogy

Although, as we said, qualitative studies may take a variety

of discrete forms, most fall into the general category of "case
studies" or "multi-site studies" (Bogdan and Biklen, 1982).
Case studies usually take in a single setting or involve only a
single subject. They tend to be detailed examinations that
vary in complexity. Forms of case studies include institutional
history, like the history of a college, a labor union, or a disci-
pline. A person's life history or biography is really a variation
of the case study. Another case study form, the observational
study, characteristically includes direct personal contact be-
tween the researcher and subject-participants. Still another
form of case study is the situation analysis, an inquiry focused
on an event or process with the goal of reconstructing it from
the perspectives of the people involved.
In case studies of any form, generalizability is an im-
portant issue. Thus, one early planning decision centers on
whether to select typical cases or atypical cases. Typicality
implies that the researcher is interested in generalizability.
Typical cases tend to show researchers resemblances. Atypi-
cality, on the other hand, aims at situating the individual
phenomena identified somewhere on the continuum of human
experience. It indicates differences.
Multi-site studies are more complex logistically than case
studies, and they often center on theory development. In
multi-site studies, the phases of data collection, analysis,
theory development, and theory testing proceed in a looping,
interrelated, iterative fashion. The researcher may begin with
a thorough, open-ended interview with a respondent thought
to be a good example of the focus of the study. From this
interview, a general theory may emerge. A second, then a
third subject may be interviewed, and be asked to suggest other
subjects. A s successive interviews accumulate, they suggest
theory revisions. In fact, as this process continues, the
researcher expects—even hopes—to find negative cases as
evidence on which to base theory changes. The study ends
when a researcher no longer encounters negative cases—that
is to say, the theory finally fits all cases. This method is
sometimes referred to as "analytic induction" (Bogdan and
Biklen, 1982).
Semiotics, Deconstruction, and Qualitative Methodology 253

4. Evaluating Qualitative Research

Evaluations of qualitative research center on the trustworthi-
ness of their evidence. Those who base their comparisons on
criteria more properly limited to the quantitative paradigm
often assail qualitative research for its lack of rigor and
validity. But Campbell and Stanley's 1963 treatise on quanti-
tative research methodology as applied in education and the
social sciences described threats to validity and set forth
specific research designs to counter these threats. Evaluations
of quantitative studies, then, center mainly on how well a par-
ticular design selected for a specific study reduces or eliminates
—that is "controls"—threats to internal and external validity
and, to a lesser extent, reliability. Quantitative evaluation
criteria issue solely from the axioms and postulates of the
quantitative paradigm.
Nevertheless, these criteria are often inappropriately used
to evaluate qualitative research. This inappropriate applica-
tion reflects the culturally embedded assumption that privi-
leges scientific or quantitative knowledge as absolute truth.
The same odd synecdoche that installed scientific knowledge
atop the epistemological hierarchy established quantitative
methodology as "the best and only way." The qualitative per-
spective regards this hierarchy and the attendant privilege as
specious.
Qualitative research methodology accepts a different set
of axioms and postulates from those of the quantitative para-
digm, and we should clearly understand that all axioms and
postulates are assumptions, beliefs or propositions stipulated
without proof and accepted as self evident. Applying the
beliefs and assumptions of the quantitative paradigm to quali-
tative inquiries is analogous to applying them to such forms of
knowledge as history or theology. Yet no one criticizes his-
tory or theology because their unscientific methods fail to con-
form to beliefs central to quantification. It turns the tables to
point out that GodePs mathematical theorem demonstrates
that statements from a particular system cannot be proved or
disproved on the basis of that system's own axioms (Morgan,
1983). Observations cannot be self-evident. A statement is
not true because it is based on a certain belief in a correlative
truth. We call this "circular reasoning."
254 Critical Art Pedagogy

Evaluative criteria appropriate for establishing the trust-

worthiness of a qualitative inquiry differ from those used to
establish the trustworthiness of quantitative research. Demon-
strations of trustworthiness are, of course, essential for both
paradigms, and Lincoln and Guba (1985) placed the evaluation
criteria of each one into three categories: truth value, ap-
plicability, and dependability.
"Truth value" is analogous to the "internal validity" asso-
ciated with quantitative research. Internal validity is the degree
to which observed changes in the dependent variable (the out-
come) result directly from the experimenter's manipulation
of the independent variable (the treatment) as opposed to the
influence of some other variable that the researcher could not
or did not control. Stated another way, the task of determin-
ing the internal validity of a study involves finding out wheth-
er the instruments really measured what they were supposed to
measure. To establish a causal relationship between a study's
outcome and treatment variables, the quantitative researcher
must rule out variables external to the study as causes of the
observed changes in the outcome. Various experimental de-
signs have been formulated to control these extraneous vari-
ables. Quantitative researchers typically attempt to deploy
the design that promises the optimum control over external
threats to internal validity. Many contextual factors, like
financial resources and availability of subjects, can influence
the selection of a design. Also, while other types of validity
exist, internal validity has gained acceptance as most impor-
tant for determining the truth value of quantitative research.
The qualitative researcher assumes that truth or meaning
is composed of many constructed realities. Any evaluation of
a qualitative inquiry should, therefore, rest on the degree to
which the study reconstructed multiple realities from its sub-
ject-participants. The primary means of making this determi-
nation is the "member check." The qualitative researcher
invites the subject-participants to discuss and evaluate both
the data and its analysis. The subject-participants should find
both credible. Another technique for evaluating the truth-
fulness of qualitative inquiry is "peer debriefing," wherein a
qualitative researcher will ask his or her colleagues for a
critical appraisal of the data collection and analysis.
Semiotics, Deconstruction, and Qualitative Methodology 255

Quantitative researchers define "applicability" as the ex-

ternal validity or generalizability of conclusions. External
validity depends chiefly on how accurately the sample used for
a quantitative study represented the population from which it
came. In quantitative research, one always finds a compromise
between internal and external validity. Neither can be
achieved absolutely. Experiments that are too tightly control-
led or are restricted to highly specific subgroups tend to have a
low generalizability or applicability. Conversely, studies that
are too diverse, too complex, too large, or too long tend to
have a low internal validity, hence low truth value.
Qualitative methodology conceives of applicability as
transferability (Lincoln and Guba, 1985). Qualitative research
assumes that an inquiry's products will provide working hypo-
theses for other researchers or consumers of research in other
contexts. A l l conclusions of qualitative inquiry remain tenta-
tive. None comes with a guarantee. Ascertaining transferabil-
ity of results is a matter for the reader of the research, not the
researcher. Transferability involves determining the relation-
ship between the setting of the qualitative study and another
setting in which the study results might be applied. The qualita-
tive principle of "thick description" helps make this determin-
ation. Thick description simply means richly detailed data and
reports of its analysis that reconstruct the subject-partici-
pants' lived experiences. Thick description generally results
from purposive sampling procedures, interwoven data collec-
tion and analysis, and a broad and thorough data collection.
The positivist version of "dependability" is reliability, or
consistency over repeatedly measured trials. The quantitative
methodology determines and expresses reliability numerically,
generally in the form of a correlation coefficient like the
Pearson-Product Moment correlation. Different types of reli-
ability in quantitative research include split-half, parallel
forms, and test-retest. In qualitative inquiry, one calls dependa-
bility by its name, "dependability" (Halpern, 1983; Lincoln
and Guba, 1985). Lincoln and Guba suggested that the best
means of determining the dependability of a qualitative study
is the inquiry audit, which in some respects resembles a fiscal
audit. It has two purposes: (1) to examine the process of the
256 Critical Art Pedagogy

inquiry so as to appraise its overall acceptability, and (2) to

examine the internal coherence and accuracy of the product.
Goetz and LeCompte (1984) presented a framework
suitable for assessing most reports of qualitative inquiry. They
advised that a report include eight sections: (1) goals and ques-
tions, (2) the conceptual and theoretical framework that
informed the research, (3) the overall design, (4) the subject-
participants that provided the data, (5) the experiences and
roles of the researchers, (6) the data collection methods em-
ployed, and (8) the conclusions, interpretations and potential
applications.
Those of us interested in the foundations of critical art
pedagogy understand that qualitative research shares with
quantitative methodology structure, rigor, and discipline. The
two ways of knowledge making differ radically, of course, as
to the specifics of these features. Perhaps their most impor-
tant shared property is the requirement that research be
carried out and reported in the public discourse of its ap-
propriate discipline so that it can be critically evaluated.

5. A Brief History of Qualitative Research

A recent and dramatic increase in the number of qualitative
education studies has followed in the wake of an increasing
general acceptance of qualitative methodologies as legitimate
instruments for knowledge production. But these seemingly
fresh methods have a long and rich tradition in anthropology,
sociology, and other disciplines tangential to education (Bog-
dan and Biklen, 1982). Early in the development of qualita-
tive methods, less formal, nonacademic versions of qualitative
inquiry in these and related fields helped raise the social con-
science at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning
of the twentieth. Journalism, for example, accommodated an
early form of qualitative inquiry. Descriptions of such social
problems attendant upon the Industrial Revolution as urban
and rural poverty, child labor, mass immigration, public health
issues, discrimination based on race or class or gender, and the
lack of access to education increased society's awareness of a
need to define the dimensions of ethical social responsibility
and act accordingly. Examples of early qualitative description
included the "muckraking" journalists like Lincoln Steffens,
Semiotics, Deconstruction, and Qualitative Methodology 257

Ida Tarbell, Jacob Riis, and Lewis Hine who exposed for the
general public the depth of its social problems in ways that
shocked the American consciousness. In addition to vivid and
hyperbolic prose, they pioneered the practice of incorpor-
ating photographic images into their reporting for the mass
audience. Photographs added drama to their unabashed, tren-
chant, subjective sympathy for the people immersed in these
social problems. In fact, one could say that the emergence of
a social conscience was the accretionary effect of their jour-
nalistic exposes. They provoked a new awareness that the
problems faced by individuals in the silent, invisible classes
pose problems for all of society.
A t the turn of the century, an early form of qualitative
research called the social survey, more methodologically rigor-
ous than muckraking journalism, began to hint at later social-
scientific research methods in anthropology and sociology.
Social surveys followed organized data collection programs in
particular, usually urban communities, aimed at determining
the extent of the social problems and the nature of the opini-
ons in that community. The rise of the natural sciences in the
nineteenth century prompted attempts to address social issues
from a scientific, rather than a philosophical perspective. But
social surveys had been conducted earlier in Europe. Examples
include Frederick LePlay's (1879) studies of French working
class families, Les Ouvriers Europeans, and Henry Mayhew's
(1851) London Labour and the London Poor, These studies
used extensive and thorough interviews of subject-participants
asked to describe their everyday lives.
Anthropology's contribution to the emergence of qualita-
tive methodology as a theoretical foundation for education
began with Frans Boas and his associates in 1898, who were
probably the first anthropologists to do significant fieldwork in
the natural setting alongside their subjects. Boas's methods
included many still characteristic of qualitative research. More-
over, he presciently advocated the concept of culture as
relative.
Goetz and Lecompte (1984) observed that despite the
similarities between these notable incipient examples and the
qualitative methodologies of today, the early researchers fell
far short o f producing sound scholarship. This observation
258 Critical Art Pedagogy

underscored the fact that qualitative inquiry now has a defined

structure of methodological guidelines and codes by which one
can assess the dependability and trustworthiness of its out-
comes. A s we have just seen, despite their fundamental dif-
ferences, a rigorous codification designed to ensure validity is
as pertinent to qualitative research as it is to quantitative
methods.
Goetz and LeCompte found the beginning of modern,
rigorous anthropological fieldwork in Bronislaw Malinowski's
1922 study of the Trobriand Islanders. His presence on the
island was an absolute requirement for his extensive and
carefully documented work, and the personal contact between
researcher and subjects in the subjects' spaces had become the
primary and universally accepted method of anthropological
research by the 1930s. Interestingly enough, Malinowski's
contribution may have sprung more from accident than from
conscientiousness. Stranded in the field during World War I
with few resources, he turned his predicament into an oppor-
tunity. In addition to the specific content of his fieldwork with
the Trobriand Islanders, Malinowski made substantive contribu-
tions to the methodology of qualitative research. He described
in detail how he obtained his data and further developed the
idea that a theory of culture must be grounded in the lived
experience of individuals made available to researcher through
direct observation and inductive methods (Bogdan and Biklen,
1982).
At about the same time Malinowski applied himself to
anthropological inquiries, sociologists began to pose the types
of questions associated with qualitative research and to use
qualitative methods to answer them. At the University of Chi-
cago in the 1920s and 1930s, sociologists like Robert Park,
Everett Hughes, and Louis Wirth began to explore the form
of qualitative research that subsequently developed into ethno-
graphy (Goetz and LeCompte, 1984). In contrast to the
exotic locales that interested anthropologists, they used many
of the principal methods of fieldwork in anthropology to de-
scribe city life. For example, as a professor at the University
of Chicago, Park sent graduate students out into the streets to
conduct their studies. Thus, personal observation and partici-
Semiotics, Deconstruction, and Qualitative Methodology 259

pation continued as principal techniques in the development

of qualitative inquiry.
Qualitative methodologies emerged in education in the
1960s as educational researchers joined sociologists and an-
thropologists to petition federal agencies willing to fund quali-
tative social science research projects. Early examples include
Leacock's 1969 study of the effects of teacher expectations
on the performance of children and Henry's studies of racial
issues in St. Louis elementary schools in 1970 and 1973.
Qualitative research in education soon entered a growth
phase. Bogdan and Biklen (1982) associated the social up-
heavals in the late 1960s and early 1970s with the increased
acceptance of qualitative research among educators. The gen-
eral unrest, the challenges to authority, and the questioning of
traditional assumptions during this period all correlated well
with the skepticism about quantitative research methods in-
herent in the qualitative paradigm. Students and educators on
all levels wanted to know more about the human condition
than the old paradigm had been telling them, and qualitative in-
quiry offered new ways to learn more. Its responsive work also
resonated with the idealism of the 1960s and 1970s. It offered
the means to describe the lived experiences of the powerless
and socially disenfranchised and to address their issues.
In addition to socio-political factors, changes in philoso-
phy, psychology, and other disciplines that influence education
also encouraged qualitative research methods in education. In
philosophy, a shift from positivism to phenomenological and
existential world views provided an impetus for the change. In
psychology, the decline of behaviorism and subsequent re-
newed interest in cognitive psychology, with its tradition of
subjectivity and introspection, increased an awareness of the
possibilities qualitative methodologies offer.

6. Making Qualitative Research Critical: Applying

Qualitative Methodologies in Critical Art Pedagogy
Qualitative research is far from critical, per se. One must
deliberately apply it to critical ends. This reorientation can
come about in several ways. Critical qualitative research as-
sumes that power relates dynamically to claims of truth and
value. The relationships between power, truth and value
260 Critical Art Pedagogy

emerge at several levels of awareness and range from subjec-

tive experience to complex social organizations and institu-
tions. When the relationships between power, truth and value
lean toward power, coercion and oppression result. The con-
sequence of coercion and oppression is a further distortion of
truth and value. We have already explored the operation of
power in its relations to truth and value claims in several dis-
cussions here, and as we have seen, art can be an extremely
efficient communication tool when used to reproduce asym-
metrical power relations. Not only is art efficient, but it can
also operate surreptitiously as an instrument of power. Its
marginalized position among the important dimensions of
human experience makes it particularly vulnerable to appropri-
ation in the service of hegemony. The longevity and ubiquity
of the genre of martial equestrian public sculpture provides an
apt illustration. The desecration or destruction of sculptures
that glorify military heroes and political leaders are, not coin-
cidentally, among the first symbolic acts of revolution.
When qualitative research addresses the problems of asym-
metrical power relations in the lived experience of individuals
and in particular settings, that research becomes critical. Note
also that qualitative research is emergent, and that critical re-
search questions, concepts, themes, and issues often change
over the duration of a study. Critical awareness can build
during a study to a threshold at which it becomes one of the
emergent themes. A critical orientation toward emancipatory
goals can become an important guideline in emergent research
designs by recognizing several characteristics of qualitative
research that match it well to critical aims. One characteristic
is the recognition that facts and values are interrelated phe-
nomena. The reintegration of values and facts means that
critical qualitative research applications can be consciously
value-centered, with the value of liberation paramount. The
critical qualitative researcher is free to address his or her ideo-
logical commitments and acknowledge that these perspectives
actually constitute research instruments themselves. The
researcher's ideological assumptions, beliefs, values, consci-
ence, compassion, intellectual commitments, and subjectively
held professional opinions can inform the research design,
data collection, and most forms of qualitative data analysis.
Semiotics, Deconstruction, and Qualitative Methodology 261

They influence what the researcher sees and develops as knowl-

edge.
We call consciously ideological qualitative research—in
the sense that one intends to promote change, typically in
sites of oppression and disenfranchisement—"critical action
research" or "critical applied research." It develops under-
standings that form dangerous knowledge applicable in a
resistance to problems related to power relationships in speci-
fic settings. The critical qualitative research aim of developing
solutions to such problem constitutes its value-centeredness.
Carspecken (1996) has spotted a difficulty with recon-
ciling the value-centeredness of critical qualitative research
with the principles of deconstruction. As we now know, both
critical theory and deconstruction contribute abundantly to
the foundations of critical art pedagogy and to postmodern
thought in general. But deconstruction is ultimately suspicious
of any interpretation whatsoever since it interprets signs and
signifiers relationally—that is, with reference to other signs.
Deconstruction admits of no transcendental signified or final,
absolutely correct interpretation. No truth or value statement
can claim privilege over any other—including critical theory
and its perspectives on social justice.
Yet this discrepancy may be resolvable. Derrida conceives
of relationships among signs and significations as universal per-
ceptual experiences. But, Kincheloe and McLaren (1994)
reframe the operation of signs and signifiers in terms that co-
here with the fundamental tenet of critical theory just noted
—namely, that power is interrelated with claims of truth and
value. This realization echoes the critical theory principle of
the inseparability of facts and values, which means that power
relations influence the interpretation of signs. Thus, even sign-
signification relationships bear the traces of distortions from
ideology and power. In postmodern terms, the value commit-
ments of critical qualitative research are far from arbitrary. It
seeks to develop an understanding of how power relations,
especially coercive power relations, determine interpretations
of signs. Interpretations are claims of truth and value at work
in people's lived experience in particular settings. Kincheloe
and McLaren (1994) thus effect something of a rapproche-
ment between critical theory and deconstruction as compo-
262 Critical Art Pedagogy

nents of postmodern thought. Postmodernism has been called

nihilistic for appearing to reject all absolute criteria for truth
and value claims. Kincheloe and McLaren call their version
"critical postmodernism" to differentiate it from the more
nihilistic forms (Carspecken, 1 9 9 6 ) .
Moreover, critical qualitative research is, in a sense, post-
methodological, distinguished more by its purposes and episte-
mological assumptions than by its methods. Critical qualita-
tive research has so far avoided any requirement of defined
procedures logically derived from first principles. To be sure, a
methodological structure accompanies any form of qualitative
research. But it is a general structure with few prescribed com-
ponents. In critical qualitative research, methods do not en-
force objectivity as a property of truth. Critical qualitative
research is eclectic, appropriating methods heuristically within
the broadly conceived category of qualitative research.
In 1994, the National Art Education Association ( N A E A )
adopted a coordinated research agenda with the nebulously
stated goal of improving the quality of eduction in the visual
arts. The report of this agenda, entitled Implementing a
Visual Arts Education Research Program, advocates exploring
diverse approaches to research methods and the identification
of research issues and questions. Although explicit references
to the critical perspective are scarce, the N A E A ' s research
agenda poses questions applicable to all research styles, in-
cluding the critical qualitative methodologies. It remains to be
seen whether critical research projects will enjoy resources
like project funding and space in N A E A publications. The
N A E A divided its agenda into these eight areas, each of which
entails particular questions for research:

1. DEMOGRAPHICS Who teaches art in schools and at what

levels? How are they trained? How are they assessed? How
do states differ demographically and educationally?

2. CONCEPTUAL ISSUES In what ways is art defined in educa-

tion? What goals are appropriate for art programs? What
content will be taught? To whom? How do critical theory,
postmodernism, feminist theory, and cultural diversity
affect art in society?
Semiotics, Deconstruction, and Qualitative Methodology 263

3. C U R R I C U L U M What are major curriculum theories? How do

they differ across socio-economic levels? How is quality
of the curriculum assessed and perceived by different
audiences? How does formal learning in art differ from in-
formal learning?

4. INSTRUCTION Are the arts taught differently in different

settings? What are the consequences? What are the ramifi-
cations of new technologies? What strategies are appropri-
ate for different groups, levels, and art content. How can
art making be linked to meaning?

5. INSTRUCTIONAL SETTING H O W do different learning environ-

ments affect art learning? How do administrative policies
affect practice?

6. STUDENT L E A R N I N G H O W do students learn about art? What

non-art outcomes are achieved by art learning?

7. are out-
P R O G R A M A N D INSTRUCTIONAL E V A L U A T I O N H O W
comes assessed? How is creativity assessed? How do assess-
ment practices differ across age, socio-economic status,
gender, and racial groups?

8. T E A C H E R E D U C A T I O N What values, skills, and conceptual

knowledge must an art teacher have? Are teachers
prepared for diversity? Are they prepared for the integra-
tion of arts across the curriculum?

The N A E A statements seem more or less amenable to

major research styles, including historical, descriptive, experi-
mental, theoretical, interpretative, philosophical, and critical
qualitative. The organization also underscores the need to fit
the appropriate method to the research question. It would be
premature to draw specific conclusions about how the N A E A
research program relates to the various research methodolo-
gies, but from the critical perspective, certain concerns
emerge. First, the N A E A research agenda strains somewhat to
present a systematic, comprehensive, integrated program. It
may be too cohesive, too "groupthink." We can expect hierar-
264 Critical Art Pedagogy

chies favoring certain methodologies to form, as they do in all

research-based academic disciplines. One of the roles of the
critical perspective is to sustain its skepticism and monitor
this initiative for domination by one particular way of thinking
over others. This scrutiny extends to applications of findings
as well as methodologies.
Second and more specifically, the N A E A ' s research initia-
tive lacks such specific critical questions and content as how
to promote teachers' understandings of their own life worlds,
of how their beliefs and practices are shaped by social forces,
and of how to chart courses of emancipatory action through
explorations of the art world. The general orientation of the
N A E A agenda is positivist: It seems to assume that both re-
search method and the instructional processes linked to them
are linear processes to be pushed toward a fixed result that can
be defined, objectively measured and declared an improve-
ment.
Like teaching methods, research methods can benefit from
a recasting in critical terms. Uncritical research ultimately
fails to link theory and practice because it is apolitical and
ahistorical—that is to say, misguided by the myths of objec-
tivity ingrained in positivist forms of knowledge. To benefit
from the critical perspective, research in art pedagogy needs
to be politically and historically grounded (McLaren and
Girelli, 1995). One could transform the N A E A agenda critical-
ly, but one must recognize that research methodologies of any
style operate within specific political and historical contexts
that shape outcomes. Also, each research methodology re-
flects or contains ideological markings of its own.
Kincheloe (1995) enumerated five characteristics of criti-
cal qualitative research. The first is the rejection of the myths
of naive realism and objectivity associated with the positivist
paradigm. This rejection necessitates the associated rejection
of confidence in the fundamental, common-sense, positivist
assumption that values and facts are separable.
The second distinguishing feature of critical qualitative re-
search is that researchers should be conscious of the values and
ideological assumptions that guide their own methods and
outcomes. Likewise, critical qualitative researchers should be
Semiotics, Deconstruction, and Qualitative Methodology 265

conscious of how the values and ideologies of others, especial-

ly those in power, shape beliefs, experience, and practice.
The third marker of critical qualitative research is the
acknowledgment that the discipline and profession of educa-
tion is a continuing public discourse, socially transacted and
constructed.
The fourth determining factor is that critical qualitative re-
search promotes the development of dangerous knowledge. In
art education, this means exploring how engagement with the
arts promotes the revelation and resistance to oppressive so-
cial, political, and economic structures.
Fifth, one embarks upon critical research in education for
the ultimate purpose of improving those educational practices
that strive to achieve emancipatory outcomes. Critical qualita-
tive research focuses on relationships described as hierarchies,
hegemony, binary oppositions, and asymmetrical power rela-
tions in specific settings as sites where dangerous knowledge
should be mined and applied.
Chapter Five

Aesthetics for Critical Praxis

This chapter explores and critiques certain themes in tradition-

al aesthetics historically implicated as sources of maladaptive
practices in art and art education. These practices diminish
the roles the institutions of the art world and art in the
schools play in society and culture. This chapter also explores
the shapes and textures of a postmodern, critical theory-based
approach to aesthetics so as to describe tenets of a critical aes-
thetics that provide a conceptual framework for art-as-praxis,
a principal component of critical art pedagogy. The chapter
concludes with proposals for incorporating critical aesthetics
into critical art pedagogy.
To begin with, bear in mind the primary theme in critical
aesthetics: integration to achieve art-as-praxis. Through its em-
phasis on the concept of art-as-praxis, critical aesthetics pro-
vides both a theoretical foundation and a path for action for
critical art pedagogy. The integration of aesthetic theory and
the practices of making art and reflecting on art in meaningful
ways promotes the commitment of critical art pedagogy to
emancipatory aims. This association forms the conceptual
basis for the elevation of engagement, in art and art education
from the status of technocratic reproduction to the higher
level of authentic praxis.
Critical aesthetics provides an essential foundation for
critical practice in art and art education because it contributes
the primary means by which critical consciousness transforms
an individual's engagement in the process of art making and in
aesthetic encounters into critical praxis. The concept of art-
as-praxis in critical aesthetics includes three interactive
elements: (1) art making and encountering art or aesthetic ex-
periences with art or non-art objects and phenomena; (2) the
integration of aesthetic experience and aesthetic value as a
268 Critical Art Pedagogy

form of knowing grounded in a critical consciousness that in

turn forges links between an individual's art world and life
world; and (3) the engagement in critical discourse about aes-
thetics directed at emancipatory ends by enacting the belief
that art, art education, and aesthetic experience broadly de-
fined can be liberating forces that elevate human existence.
Historical understanding informs the development of
every foundation of critical art pedagogy, especially aesthet-
ics. An understanding of current beliefs, actions, and struggles
as situated in a continuing story encourages the development
of dangerous knowledge. Accordingly, this chapter weaves
into its discussions of issues common to both traditional and
critical aesthetics, details and commentary about the historical
developments in philosophical aesthetics, with special atten-
tion to how traditional aesthetics has helped compromise the
art world and general culture and thereby raise obstacles to art-
as-praxis. A n historical perspective also leads to a critical
consciousness of how an individual's personal art world can be
colonized.
The critical aesthetics theme of integration extends to the
constructs of aesthetic experience and aesthetic value. Critical
aesthetics centers on the task of identifying, describing and
subverting the separation of aesthetic value from aesthetic
experience by such forces as Cartesian and positivist philo-
sophies. Vestigial forms of these influences survive today as a
weak scaffold supporting the facade of the modernist cultural
project.
The separation of aesthetic experience and aesthetic value
parallels the separation of the art world from the life world
resulting from the colonization of the individual's art world.
The de-aestheticizing of lived experience, personal knowl-
edge, and culture results from the separation of aesthetic value
and aesthetic experience. The de-aestheticizing of quotidian
experience usually proceeds as a tacit process during the
colonization of life worlds. The phenomenologist Edmund
Husserl introduced the concept of the life world, or lebens-
weldt, to refer to the world of everyday lived experience—the
context of reality where human experience, feeling, believing,
valuing, knowing, and taking action occur (Kincheloe, 1991;
Colapietro, 1993; Deeley, 1990). As oppressive forces colo-
Aesthetics for Critical Praxis 269

nize life worlds, meanings, beliefs, and values systematically

break down, producing a crisis to which individuals respond
either by capitulating to their colonization or resisting it.
Critical art pedagogy and critical aesthetics illuminate these
colonizing processes and offer means to subvert them.
Meanwhile, critical aesthetics defines the concept of the
art world as an individual's experiences making art, engaging
in meaningful encounters with art, and developing aesthetic
knowledge through engaged experiences with the aesthetic
qualities of art, non-art artifacts, and natural phenomena.
Critical art pedagogy seeks to restore the individual's art world
to a place in his or her life world where it contributes to libera-
tion. The re-aestheticizing of human experience—of valuing
— o f knowing—can be accomplished by integrating aesthetic
value and aesthetic experience in both the individual's lived
experience and the culture. Critical aesthetics also includes the
more optimistic task of describing how the re-integration of
aesthetic experience and aesthetic value and the reinvestiture
of the art world as an important dimension of the life world
can improve our culture, social institutions, and individual
lives.
Critical aesthetics may seem intellectually vagrant, a
desultory project. But critical aesthetics, like critical art peda-
gogy, is an interpretative conversation wholly aware of its
own deliberate subjectivity and contextual orientation. It
avoids the attempt to arrive at first principles or universals by
rigorously disciplined, systematic inquiry. It resists logical
applications of articulated methodologies that supply tem-
plates for shaping our aesthetic conceptualizations and experi-
ences. Therefore, this chapter describes an incipient, eclectic
working model of critical aesthetics, rather than a complete
philosophy, or a list of simplified hints, or even criteria for
acceptable practice. In short, this chapter describes a critical
aesthetics and speculates on how it can contribute to the idea
of art as critical praxis.
Thus, critical aesthetics offers itself as a resource for
critical art pedagogy's emancipatory aims. A s such, it can
hardly be expected to proceed systematically toward a fixed
goal or objectively describable destination "out there." Critical
aesthetics supplies no "last word." Aesthetics does not seek
270 Critical Art Pedagogy

convergence on some final point where universal, transcend-

ent understanding is revealed. Like critical art pedagogy as a
whole, critical aesthetics receives complete substance and
refined form from the individuals who enact it in lived experi-
ence in particular settings.
Mainstream aesthetics and critical aesthetics both pose
the same principal questions, each positioning itself, however,
to advocate radically different answers. These questions pro-
vide the general organization of this chapter, and they fall
into three categories: definitional, experiential, and valuative.

Definitional Questions of Aesthetics

The first of the general questions is how best to define art and
aesthetics. A t the general level, this question implies a need to
understand the nature of art and aesthetic objects and those
phenomena that elicit aesthetic experience as a class or
semantic category. At the specific level, this question implies
an interest in determining how and why individuals define an
object or phenomenon as art or as "aesthetic."
The word "aesthetics" appears often in everyday speech.
Most people use it with some degree of confidence to refer to
a set of meanings revolving loosely around the idea of attrac-
tive appearance. Integrated within the art world, these various
meanings center on the engaged personal experience of attrac-
tion or appeal an individual feels while encountering the art
object or phenomenon somatically, intellectually, and emo-
tionally. As a result of an encounter, one decides whether the
art object or phenomenon is aesthetically appealing and
hence, whether it possesses aesthetic value. We tend to think
of the "amount" of aesthetic value as a function of the degree
of attractiveness. (If this everyday usage seems circular, it is
because it is circular.)
The term "aesthetics" has something to do with beauty,
pleasure, art and music. It is both a noun and an adjective. In
short, we seem to have an experiential understanding of and
an intuitively formed meaning for the word "aesthetics," but
not much else. We sense meanings it must signify, but a con-
cise, generally applicable dictionary meaning remains elusive.
This difficulty of defining aesthetics precisely forces us to
accept it as a subjective term: an open, fuzzy set, with conno-
Aesthetics for Critical Praxis 271

tations more discernible to us than denotations. Perhaps this

definitional problem arises because the common-sense dictum
that aesthetic standards are wholly subjective confounds our
attempts to understand aesthetic encounters. The hackneyed
slogan, "I may not know much about art, but I know what I
like," seems to make sense.
We have the dubious legacy of positivism to thank for the
common-sense connotation of aesthetics as a prototype for
subjectivity and, by extension, for randomness, chaos, muddle-
headedness, and triviality. "Aesthetics" can carry slightly
pejorative or disdainful overtones. The busy, overworked,
stressed executive, technician, bureaucrat or teacher cannot be
bothered by mere aesthetics with more pressing practical,
objective matters at hand. The culture of positivism consigns
the aesthetic dimension of human experience to the lower
echelons of the hierarchy. In deconstruction terms, the prac-
tical and the aesthetic form a binary opposition, a false dicho-
tomy. As we saw earlier, society often uses binary oppositions
like this to sort people into ranks and, thereby, sustain
oppression.
In everyday language, we may even be aware of aesthetics
as one of the more arcane branches of philosophy, occupying
the dimmer academic precincts behind the more logical
branches like theology, ethics, and metaphysics (which in
reality, are only slightly less amorphous). Meanwhile, the aca-
demic definitions of aesthetics are just as arcane and circular as
those we find in everyday language. Art educators, art stu-
dents, and their fellow travelers familiar with Discipline-based
Art Education know that, despite its problematic nebulous
terminology, aesthetics enjoys a significant place in the art
world, along with criticism, art history, and art production.
This definitional fuzziness of aesthetics is far from unique
in popular culture and academia. "Personality" and "intelli-
gence" are examples of concepts that despite their ubiquity,
carry vague and nebulous definitions. Like "art" and "aes-
thetics," these terms are used freely in everyday speech. They
have intuitive, subjective meanings and popular connotations
that hardly approach the precise scientific meanings derived
from rigorous academic inquiry. O f course, we willingly—but
mistakenly—assume that such "real" denotative meanings
272 Critical Art Pedagogy

have been proven or certified or authorized by card-carrying

experts. Society nearly always privileges academic terminol-
ogy and concepts over common terminology because it con-
siders them to be precise denotations that accurately reflect a
higher reality than everyday life and language reflect. The
colonized mind takes it for granted that such concepts and
terms were discovered or developed under the mythical aegis
of some exalted science.
Underlying these terms one finds the embedded assump-
tion that somewhere, perhaps in academia or in some cosmic
think tank, there exists the great THEY, the indefinite pronoun
referring to experts beyond challenge who tame all esoteric
problems, presenting answers with fulgent certainty, describing
solutions with utter precision then installing them in the
canon or the archive certified as true knowledge. Furthermore,
more amorphous terms like "personality" and "aesthetics"
stir up a vague discomfort. We sense that their thinly veiled
fuzziness thwarts our acculturated, positivism-inspired need
for precision and closure. We also assume that our everyday
use of terms like these denotes merely grosser, naive versions
of the real meanings the brilliant experts know.
But the case is different with "aesthetics." Many scholarly
treatments of aesthetics begin by acknowledging the difficulty
both with defining its meaning and with specifying its bound-
aries as a subject of inquiry. In his 1914 essay, "The Aesthetic
Hypothesis," critic Clive Bell observed that scholarly litera-
ture no other subject contained so little useful information.
D.E. Berlyne (1974), a psychologist who studied aesthetic
behavior, called the difficulty of defining aesthetics "notori-
ous." Perhaps because of this difficulty, Berlyne, seeking to
understand aesthetic experience, adopted the reductionist
methodology of behaviorism, replete with such narrowly
operationalized definitions of aesthetic behavior as respiratory
rate and pupil dilation. Berlyne's work receives a more de-
tailed examination shortly.
But the difficulties with defining art and aesthetics should
hardly make it a futile pedantic exercise. If we as teachers
hope to include aesthetics in art instruction, especially instruc-
tion that incorporates the idea of engagement in the arts as
critical praxis, we need a working definition. As a component
Aesthetics for Critical Praxis 273

of critical arts pedagogy, aesthetics should include, but not

restrict itself to, reflective inquiry and discourse about the
nature of art and the nature of encounters with art. Aesthetic
experience may also accompany encounters with non-art arti-
facts and natural phenomena. Aesthetic experience includes
both producing art and interacting with the art others have
made. Aesthetic experience includes the perception, prefer-
ence or attraction, definition or categorization of an aesthetic
object or phenomenon as art, and the formation of judgments
and statements of value.

The Scope of Aesthetics

The scope of aesthetics is an issue relevant to the task of de-
fining art and aesthetic experience. Traditional aesthetics is a
philosophical discourse mainly about art but sometimes includ-
ing the aesthetic properties or aesthetic value of non-art arti-
facts and natural objects or phenomena. We usually designate
aesthetic experience as that which falls in the category of
sensuous human experience. People involved more in art than
in philosophy proper usually restrict the term "aesthetics" to
the philosophy of art. Others interested more in perspectives
from the disciplines of philosophy or psychology tend to
broaden the scope of aesthetics to include phenomena in the
natural world and non-art artifacts along with art objects.
Participants in the critical art pedagogy discourse should
adopt the broader scope of aesthetics. Critical aesthetics
should, after all, help us understand the functions and mean-
ings of human experiences that include a wide and open array
of qualities encountered during interactions with tangible non-
art artifacts and natural world phenomena, as well as with art.
Art, non-art artifacts, and natural phenomena may seem to be
an impossibly broad range to address in an educational setting.
Nevertheless, it is the set of qualities perceived and cog-
nitively constructed in a direct, engaged experience with art,
artifacts, and nature that actually provides the primary sub-
stance of aesthetics, not the objects or phenomena them-
selves. Critical aesthetics enlivens these qualities as cognitive
and sensory experiences. Traditional aesthetics protects them
as abstractions, reifies them, and ultimately misuses them as
instruments of cultural power.
274 Critical Art Pedagogy

The critical art pedagogy goal of creating educational

contexts in which persons can construct art worlds from social
interactions in which their own experiences are relevant
supplies the rationale for incorporating the broader scope of
aesthetics. These contexts include the popular culture and the
natural world as well as the art world of "high culture." After
all, critical art pedagogy seeks to link an individual's art world
and life world by engaging in art-as-praxis.
Traditional aesthetics often deliberately or by default
limits its scope to systematic inquiries about art encounters.
Non-art artifacts or natural phenomena are often construed as
falling outside the realm of legitimate inquiry. Aesthetics
within this limited scope further separates art worlds from life
worlds and aesthetic experience from other forms of knowing.
It also tends to reify aesthetic values as a set of essential facts
to be absorbed as a form of licensure granting the privilege of
defining art, assigning aesthetic value, and having legitimate
aesthetic experiences. From the traditional perspectives, so-
ciety needs a cult of art experts, which the art industry and
academia supply in abundance, to oversee this licensing. It
takes place in such traditional art education venues as schools,
museums, galleries, the media, certain sectors of the publishing
industry, and other institutions that manufacture culture.
Narrow gauge, modernist aesthetics certifies and maintains the
archive—that is, the inventory of art objects that have
reproduced the idealized formal and stylistic properties, and
the orthodox interpretations of those artworks' iconic expres-
sions that reflect and promote the interests of dominant
cultures throughout history. A n exclusive set of art works
which transmits the standards art objects must approximate
and to which serious mainstream artists must adhere, the
archive, by extension, also contains the authorized interpreta-
tions, meanings, and values experts have installed there.
Traditional art education attempts to transfer it to students in
place of their individual art worlds.
The scope of critical aesthetics is broader. It includes in-
quiry, and it includes discourse about aesthetic experiences
with art, non-art artifacts, and natural phenomena. Critical
aesthetics also concerns itself with individual, subjective, lived
aesthetic experiences at particular times, in particular con-
Aesthetics for Critical Praxis 275

texts, with particular objects or phenomena. Critical aesthet-

ics refuses to restrict its task to the construction of state-
ments that purport to define aesthetic experience according to
the belief that aesthetic value exists objectively and self-
evidently in the formal properties of art objects. Critical
aesthetics accepts an eclectic definition that resists the reduc-
tionist compulsion to designate aesthetics as a field delimited
to the study of a bounded set.

The Epistemology of Aesthetics

For both traditional and critical aesthetics, arriving at defini-
tions of art and aesthetics requires a commitment to an episte-
mological position. Both aesthetic ideologies must work out
answers to certain questions: How do we know that the designa-
tions of particular objects as art and the aesthetic value claims
are valid or truthful? How do we know that a particular form
of experience is truly aesthetic? What makes objects or phe-
nomena aesthetic?
Despite its origins as a speculative, subjective, interpretive
field of philosophical inquiry, latter day traditional aesthetics
bears the markings of positivist and logical-positivist influ-
ences. The telltale signs are its claims to rigor and objectivity.
The late nineteenth and the twentieth centuries brought
attempts to systematize aesthetics, and to make of it a field of
philosophy that produced logical, verifiable statements about
art objects and aesthetic value based on objectively observable
properties of the art object. The aesthetic positionings that
paralleled positivism separated the aesthetic object from
interpretive, subjective, experiential ways of knowing that
ensue from critical encounters with aesthetic objects. M o -
dernist aesthetics positioned itself in formalist isolation and
treated the aesthetic object as a self-referential, independent
entity that contained its own truth, aesthetic value, and reali-
ty. The modernist aesthetic object relied on the positivist-
oriented aesthetics of identity. The aesthetic object itself and
it alone contained all the necessary properties for the determi-
nation of its meaning and aesthetic value.
This approach secured aesthetics as a province for shaman-
like experts only, those with the mysterious ability to pene-
trate the hard-shell object, discover the kernels of truth and
276 Critical Art Pedagogy

value within, and hand down interpretations softened for popu-

lar consumption. This approach effectively denied students,
teachers and even artists an intellectual stake in both the
formation and the application of aesthetic understanding.
Barnett Newman's (1971) ironic analogy, "Aesthetics is to
artists as ornithology is to birds" sums it up: Artists and
certainly art students should stay away from philosophical
aesthetics. It is a different game, a logocentric battleground.
Speaking generally, the epistemological aspects of the art
and aesthetics definition question turned into an attempt to
understand the nature of art as an exclusive category, class, or
closed set of entities that shared essential, definitive character-
istics. Adherents set about identifying the essential characteris-
tics that art objects share or must possess in order to be
considered art objects. For example, in her 1957 book, The
Problems of Art, Suzanne K . Langer proposed a single crucial
characteristic that all art objects must have: "expressiveness."
The specification of an essential sufficiency had the chilling
effect on art eduction of endorsing one-dimensional, reduc-
tionist criteria for art, often to the detriment of the individu-
al's imagination and the exclusion of a wider variety of legiti-
mate aesthetic experiences.
By the 1950s, as the light of modernism began to fade,
the influence of positivism on aesthetics and its implications
for art eduction began to dim as well, at least in theory. B y
this time, other thinkers declined to reduce the complexities
of art to a single requirement or even an absolute set of
multiple features. Philosopher Morris Weitz (1956) conceived
of art as a category or concept much like a family resem-
blance, which implies that art can be an open-ended class of
objects or events with many similarities, but not necessarily
one essential, shared feature beyond the name "art." For
example, many art works like Cezanne's Apples, have color.
Other art works, like Ansel Adams' black and white photo-
graph Moonrise Over Hernandez, New Mexico, have no color,
yet they belong to the class of things we call art. Weitz drew
upon the work of German philosopher and logician Ludwig
Wittgenstein to form his understandings of aesthetics.
Wittgenstein, as you recall, had introduced the family resem-
blance idea in his book, Philosophical Investigations. He used
Aesthetics for Critical Praxis 277

the example of the relative meaning of the word "tall," and

argued that in the context of everyday experience, no exact
height exists above which all human beings are considered tall
and below which all are considered short. Instances of what we
mean when we use the term "tall" are like referent traits.
Family members may resemble one another with each member
possessing a certain trait in varying degrees from little or
none to a lot.
Philosopher Nelson Goodman (1977) used Wittgenstein's
family resemblance concept as the basis for an epistemology
of aesthetics. He rephrased the question "What is art?" as
"When is art?" He proposed several art "symptoms" as
alternatives to definitions that stipulate essential features. He
argued that art was defined less by a single essential than by
shifting configurations of traits. This argument seems to make
sense, especially considering the history of art: how else can
we account for the changes that characterize the styles of
different eras, cultures and places?
Other influences continued to open aesthetics to artists,
art educators and art students by extending and shifting its
epistemological boundaries. By the early 1980s, the Discipline-
based Art Education Movement proposed a new model for art
instruction that incorporated aesthetics as one of the four
components of art study. Also, the emerging acceptance of
the qualitative research paradigm, joined by postmodernism's
influence, has opened aesthetics to new forms of knowledge
that legitimize interpretations, hermeneutics, subjective per-
sonal experience, and the aesthetic experiences and values of
such diverse and marginalized groups as women, minorities,
and members of non-Western ethnic cultures. These new
forms of knowledge contribute to the emancipatory inclina-
tions of critical aesthetics at this formative stage and to its
abilities to vitalize a critical art pedagogy by resisting the
arcane language and logico-deductive structures that the posi-
tivist, object-centered, traditional aesthetics of self-referential
identity require. The epistemology of critical aesthetics pro-
vides for a living aesthetics as a human discourse grounded in
the individual-centered reality of lived experience.
Epistemologically, critical aesthetics reverses the de-
terminism of modernist aesthetics. In the former perspective,
278 Critical Art Pedagogy

people "cause"—that is, construct or assign or determine—

aesthetic value in living experience as they actually encounter
objects and phenomena. Aesthetic value flows from aesthetic
experience, not vice versa. The new subjectivity in critical
aesthetics takes us still closer to art-as-praxis: It strengthens
the link between art making and aesthetic experience and
aesthetic value, and welcomes individuals into an under-
standing of that connection.

Historical Definitions of Art and Aesthetics

As you can tell by now, the history of aesthetics necessarily
chronicles a variety of definitions. The early philosophers
thought systematically about the nature of art and people's
experience with it. Plato feared the power and the illusory
nature of art and excluded artists from his ideal society on the
grounds that the arts exert destabilizing social effects. Ironical-
ly enough, a critical theory of art education holds the same
view, but with a far different valence. Plato was right that art
can be subversive. Critical art practitioners, however, cele-
brate this subversive quality and regard it as a virtue. Aristotle
also sensed power in the arts. But unlike Plato, he saw a
positive role for this power. The arts, he saw, could contribute
to social order and to an individual's happiness by producing
catharsis, the redemptive release of negative energy.
Aesthetics attracted relatively little attention from the
time of the Greeks until the mid-eighteenth century, when
German philosopher Alexander Baumgarten applied the term
"aesthetics" to the inquiry into ways that perception and
imagination interact in our process of knowing (Berlyne,
1974). Baumgarten also used the phrase "sensory cognition"
in his analysis of forms of experience with art (Edwards,
1967). Some contemporary writers on the subject describe
Baumgarten's conception of aesthetics as a field of philoso-
phical inquiry as "the science of the beautiful" (Crawford,
1987). Throughout much of the eighteenth and the nine-
teenth centuries, the focus of aesthetics fell on understanding
beauty and its perception. By the end of the nineteenth
century, the increasingly scholarly, but still nebulous, disci-
pline of aesthetics had progressed to the point of acquiring its
own history and historian, namely Bernard Bosanquet, who
Aesthetics for Critical Praxis 279

defined aesthetics as the philosophy of beauty in his 1892

treatise History of Aesthetic (Crawford, 1987).
Other thinkers went beyond this definition. In his 1934
book, Art as Experience, John Dewey considered inquiry into
the nature of beauty as a necessary but insufficient definition
of aesthetics. Dewey believed that an aesthetic dimension
existed in many forms of human experience, not just in art.
Aesthetic experience can occur in a person's perception of
nature, for example while walking through an old-growth
forest or while watching a sunset. Aesthetic experiences may
likewise occur with non-art manufactured objects. People may
describe as "aesthetic" their feeling when driving a new car,
solving a difficult mathematical equation, wearing new
clothing, changing hairstyles, and so forth. Dewey referred to
the "work of art" not as the art object, but rather as the indi-
vidual's perception and appreciation of something as art.
Today, by most accounts, the aesthetics in the philoso-
phical mainstream concentrates its focus on art. In developing
an aesthetics component compatible with critical art peda-
gogy, however, searching for or constructing an overarching,
absolute, precise, technical definition of aesthetics covering all
cases for all people is unworkable. Nomothetic definitions, by
definition, reduce the options available to individual students
and teachers in particular contexts of critical pedagogical prac-
tice. In short, in critical art pedagogy, we may legitimately use
"aesthetic" to describe the experience of wonder, appeal, or
attraction to art and similar feelings in an old-growth forest or
while watching a sunset. Important distinctions may certainly
exist among aesthetic experiences across these different
domains. But whether an individual's aesthetic experience is
compelled by art or by nature or by a manufactured object has
little theoretical relevance in critical art pedagogy where the
goals as they relate to aesthetics oblige us to be more interest-
ed in understanding how power interests shape aesthetic
experience and how structural and deliberate social inequalities
restrict access to aesthetic experience. We must also work to
understand how, in the practices of critical art pedagogy,
aesthetic experience can help shape critical consciousness and
create possibilities for action that transforms oppression into
emancipation.
280 Critical Art Pedagogy

Designating Art as Art:

Individual Aesthetic Encounters
The problem of defining art also occurs when we find ourselves
observing an individual art object or event. Like the attempts
to form a general categorical definition, stipulating the terms
by which one recognizes the individual art object as such can
also be troublesome. Recall that the problem of defining art as
art refers to seeing it as a member of the class or "fuzzy set"
of art objects. Designating an individual art object as a mem-
ber of the category of artworks at this point is separate from
the issue of whether or not the object is "good" art.
Picasso's Guernica is widely recognized as a work of art.
It is a painting. It hangs in a museum. It would be difficult to
believe that—excepting very young children, the visually or
mentally challenged, or members of aboriginal cultural groups
unfamiliar with Western objects—anyone would fail to identi-
fy this or most other paintings in the museum as a work of
art.
Picasso's 1943 sculpture Bull's Head, however, presents
problems. It consists of a bicycle seat and handlebars arranged
so that the handlebars suggest a bull's horns and the seat his
head. Picasso cast the bronze sculpture from actual bicycle
parts. Can bicycle parts be art? Picasso's humorous juxta-
position of the seat and handlebars redefined the two objects
as a member of the art category.
In a similar vein, we readily identify Michelangelo's David
as a work of art. But his series of sculptures The Slaves are un-
finished. Michelangelo's nascent figures only begin to emerge
from the coarse stone covered by rough chisel cuts he certain-
ly would have polished had he completed the work. These
sculptures, however, are displayed prominently in the Louvre
as unquestioned members of the "fuzzy set" of objects defined
as art.
A story that one hopes is apocryphal underscores the
importance of the question of defining individual objects as
art. In the 1950s heyday of Abstract Expressionism, an expen-
sive sculpture consisting of bent and broken car bumpers
welded together was delivered to the loading dock of a promi-
nent museum where the large, heavy piece was uncrated and
set awaiting installation in the museum. Later, a cleaning crew
Aesthetics for Critical Praxis 281

hauled it away to a junk yard to be melted down as scrap

metal.
These examples illustrate the aesthetic salience of the
question of defining art during an encounter between a particu-
lar individual and a particular art object at a particular time
and place: "Is this object art?" We see here the real world
application of the central definitional question. Critical aesthet-
ics postulates that the right or responsibility or privilege of
designating the artness of an object and the aesthetic quality
in an experience goes to the individual. Determination of art-
ness and aesthetic experience and aesthetic value occur in the
context of real, lived experience transacted by particular indi-
viduals at particular times and particular places.

The Nature of Aesthetic Experience

The nature of aesthetic experience is the second major issue
of aesthetics. Like the question of defining art, the question of
the nature of aesthetic experience reflects the wide divergence
between traditional and critical aesthetics.
Some scholars, for example those of the Frankfurt School,
took cultural approaches to understanding aesthetic experi-
ence. To analyze aesthetic experience, most members of the
Frankfurt School believed, one must begin with the social and
political dimensions of art and aesthetic experience. Contem-
porary critical aesthetics, especially as it provides support for
critical art pedagogy, affirms that we must also examine the
aesthetic dimensions of society.
For Walter Benjamin, art evoked aesthetic experience and
value to the degree it is "existent" or "authentic" in daily life
(Held, 1980). Benjamin pointed to the function of art in
primitive cults where it often became a primary component
of rituals and ceremonies that forged a communal conscious-
ness, an awareness of group membership that affirmed and
conveyed both group and individual identities. Art and ritual
can create a commonly experienced knowledge that is perma-
nent and absolutely true in the phenomenological sense—that
is to say, true for individuals who share a group consciousness
that shapes individual perspectives to coincide with group
interests.
282 Critical Art Pedagogy

Art is instrumental in creating culture this way. It can be a

magic source of authority and authenticity in the sense that it
helps provide the means to determine that which belongs in
the group or culture and to distinguish it from that which does
not belong. Art is a way of knowing and a source of knowledge
because it functions this way as an instrument of accultura-
tion, socialization and education.
Benjamin contrasted these crucial functions of art with art
that is "on view" (Held, 1980). Today we refer to this type of
art as "spectacle": art meant to be seen from without, on a
pedestal, sequestered in a museum. Art as spectacle is remote
from full sensory experience and larger cultural significance. It
cannot be approached or interpreted as text. This type of art
leads to a marginalization of the art world because the art re-
mains largely irrelevant to the individual's lived experience in
a culture. A l l cultural life has to do with rituals or sanctions
that lend it authenticity and legitimacy. Art's diminution as a
force in the creation of group or cultural consciousness began,
according to Benjamin, with its commodification. It came to
be treated as a product rather than as an instrumental reality
embedded in the cultural rituals that organized society and con-
sciousness of group identity among its members. With com-
modification, the experience of art became a private matter
rather than a group experience.
The separation of ritual and art came about, Benjamin
believed, with the rise of technology. The mechanical repro-
duction of art objects destroyed its uniqueness and its function
in the creation of group identity and knowledge. The cultural-
ly conferred meanings of art objects became temporary, sub-
ject to change, and contingent upon individual differences.
The perfection of engraving, printmaking, photography, mu-
sical recording, and cinema brought changes in the ways the
masses perceived art. The ideologies of art-as-spectacle and
art-as-commodity separated art from the cultural process of
meaning formation which transpires in social life through the
sharing of experiences. The separation of art from meaning,
in turn, created a vacuum quickly filled by experts' prescrip-
tions for how people should experience art-as-spectacle and
art-as-commodity and what they should take art to mean.
Personal aesthetic experience became a matter of striving to
Aesthetics for Critical Praxis 283

match these predetermined, prototype aesthetic experiences;

aesthetic experience required the authentication of validation
sources external to the individual.
The Frankfurt School by no means spoke with one voice
on aesthetics. Interestingly enough, Benjamin excluded cine-
ma from the list of art forms diminished by mechanical repro-
ducibility. In fact, he believed that film had the power to
mobilize the masses toward emancipatory ends and revolution-
ary action. Adorno, on the other hand, criticized Benjamin
for this naivete and his "blind confidence" in the proletariat
(Held, 1980). Adorno regarded film as a low-brow art form
that both distracted the masses and reinforced their worst
characteristics. The fears of Plato 2300 years before reap-
peared in the Frankfurt school in the early twentieth century.
In contrast to Adorno's assertions, contemporary critical
thought argues that the technology-driven proliferation of art
delays rather than destroys the production of culture and
group identity. In fact, art is as deeply embedded in the or-
ganizing rituals of popular culture as it is in any other stratum
of culture; while much of the high art of the archive, exposed
as spectacle, exists apart from the realities of lived experi-
ence.
Contemporary critical thought also distinguishes between
popular and bourgeois culture with regard to aesthetics and the
functions of art. Postmodern critical thought recognizes that
bourgeois culture—and particularly its manifestations in the
forms of consumerism, advertizing, and entertainment—
commodifies art and distracts people from critical conscious-
ness and acceptance of emancipatory goals. Bourgeois culture
lends itself to covert ideologies of domination, power, and
hegemonic relations and, in fact, broadcasts in the service of
these forces. Bourgeois culture uses art as an instrument of
commodification, produced more for economic and power-
related purposes than for cultural, artistic, and aesthetic rea-
sons. In bourgeois culture, art education takes forms consis-
tent with the economic needs of power interests.
Postmodern critical thought recognizes that contempora-
ry culture can elevate popular art as a means to emancipatory
ends. Few would deny that popular music since the 1950s so-
cial protest and "brotherhood" songs of, say, Woody Guthrie
284 Critical Art Pedagogy

or The Weavers, vastly changed the ways members of our

society relate to power and tradition. But some music protects
the status quo or invites listeners to indulge in nostalgia. The
popular music of Stephen Foster in the nineteenth century
amounted to an elegy for the moribund cultural forms and
values of the Old South. Foster's nostalgic musical com-
modities sentimentally portrayed an idyllic rural life governed
benignly by a natural order that ensconced pale plantation
owners in the big house and darkies happily singing in the
fields. Foster's songs were widely popular, but they did not go
unopposed.
Henry Clay Work, another nineteenth century musician
and Foster's politico-cultural opposite, composed popular
songs that countered Foster with parody. One song, "The
Year of Jubilo," burlesqued Foster's racism by setting to one of
Foster's own melodies a story of freed slaves who force their
overweight overseer to march and drill like a soldier in the sun
until their nemesis becomes so tanned he is dark as "contra-
band," the term used for slaves in hiding or on the Under-
ground Railway. The protest "folk" music of the 1950s and
1960s offers a more recent example of the emancipatory
potential of popular cultural forms.
Popular art also underscores the deficiencies of bourgeois
art by co-opting, reconfiguring, and redefining some of its ele-
ments and functions. The typical strategies include pastiche,
parody, appropriation, and deliberate obfuscation. Thriving in
the postmodern paradigm, critical aesthetics neither portrays
ideals nor resolves contradictions; in fact, it flaunts contradic-
tions.
The dividing lines between high art, popular art and
bourgeois art are less distinct in contemporary culture than
the aesthetic theories of the Frankfurt School pictured them.
In contemporary culture, we find an aesthetics of the status
quo and a critical aesthetics. Whether the critical aesthetic ele-
ment escaped the Frankfurt School or postdated it, an aes-
thetics of subversion is clearly present in postmodern culture.
The Frankfurt School was, of course, most interested in
aesthetics as it applied to art, and especially in how art func-
tioned in society and culture.
Aesthetics for Critical Praxis 285

The key to constructing an aesthetics from the critical

perspective is to learn how one interprets an art work as text
(Held, 1980). The sign and the signified are both of interest
here: Both the work's formal properties and its meaning and
functions in the social arena are components of critical
aesthetics. The definition of art as art grounded in social
contexts explains the need to recognize the processes by
which art participates in the creation of meaning or knowl-
edge. Especially as a theoretical foundation for the practice of
critical art pedagogy, critical aesthetics sees itself as a compo-
nent in cultural critique. Critical aesthetics seeks to address
how a society defines art and aesthetic value, how the roles
and functions art and aesthetic value are played out, and how
art and aesthetic value relate to issues of power and freedom.
Embedded in the aesthetics of The Frankfurt School, and
especially the work of Adorno and Horkheimer, we find evi-
dence of at least a subconscious allegiance to modernism.
Ignoring definite distinctions among popular culture, consumer
culture, entertainment and bourgeois culture, they lumped
them all into the category of bourgeois culture, contrasted it
with high culture, and recognized only these two categories.
Precepts consistent with modernist- and capitalist-inspired
elitism ultimately caused the aesthetic projects of the Frank-
furt School to founder. Thus, its members missed a chance to
discover and articulate alternatives to capitalist and imperi-
alist influences on art and other processes of cultural produc-
tion related to aesthetics. Also, the lack of aesthetic alter-
natives to an elitist high culture and a bourgeois low culture
reduced the potential of art, aesthetics, and art education as
elements of critical consciousness and critical action.
Some members of the Frankfurt School, notably Adorno
and Horkheimer, assumed that aesthetic value falls into
qualitative hierarchical categories that parallel Marxist concep-
tions of class—that is, the bourgeois and proletariat. But they
prescribed an autonomous art world separate from commodi-
fication. O f course i f art were truly separate from production,
class would be unable to function as a determinant of aesthetic
value and vice versa. Clearly, however, aesthetic value and
socio-economic class issues are interactive variables at work in
both the world of theory and in the realities of everyday life.
286 Critical Art Pedagogy

Postmodern critical realizations about knowledge and

praxis in art pedagogy tempt us to envision an art world that
subsumes both group and individual aesthetic experience
outside the HIGH ART-1OW art binary opposition that traditional
approaches to aesthetics presume. In fact, i f aesthetic experi-
ence and value were free from predetermined reification, both
could be enacted in lived experience, which can incorporate
both high and low cultural forms. We could argue in favor of
both high and low art worlds as suitable art as critical praxis. A
fundamental concept in critical aesthetics and art-as-praxis is
that aesthetic value issues from aesthetic experience, not vice
versa. We find value in experience, not encapsulated in the art
object.
This interrogation of the Frankfurt School's aesthetic
theory proceeded in the spirit of deconstruction. We hope to
reverse the binary opposition at the center of their aesthetic
theories: the duality between the archive of the high art world
and the bourgeois art of low culture.

Colonizing Student Art Worlds

The culture industry, art, and traditional art education all pro-
mote standardization and conformity by mechanizing art pro-
duction processes. The commodification of art by bourgeois
culture occasioned the loss of individuality on one hand and
diversity on the other. Culture came to be "administered
culture" in the sense that the meanings and values of art in
individual experience came to some extent to be culturally
determined by the commodification processes (Kellner, 1989).
Aesthetics, therefore, mediates between the culture and the
individual, and this very process suggests the invalidity of the
modernist assumption of the isolated, self-contained, self-
referential art object.
It seems ironic and a little sad that the aesthetics of the
Frankfurt School supported the agency that colonized student
art worlds. The Frankfurt School's bipolar cultural categories
meant that one could regulate access to the high culture of the
archive in ways that served the power elite.
Critical aesthetics recognizes that mass and popular culture
convey valid art forms as important components of personal
art worlds, especially the developing art worlds of students.
Aesthetics for Critical Praxis 287

Popular culture provides a rich context for aesthetic experi-

ence. Critical art pedagogy recognizes that art is a text, like
all texts, open to interpretation by free individuals and amena-
ble to a critical aesthetics in which connectedness plays a
prominent role. It considers the aesthetics of the independent
art object, reified aesthetic value, and experts' prescriptions
for authentic aesthetic experience to be damaging pedagogical
anachronisms that deter students from the enriching and
emancipatory tasks of forming a personal art world free from
colonization.
The difficulties with defining art naturally extend to the
question of aesthetic experience. Philosophers, psychologists,
artists, art educators, and others interested in the discourse
about the relation of art to individual and social experience
shy away from differentiating a singular type of human experi-
ence from all others and calling it "aesthetic." Is aesthetic
experience a unified construct? Equivocation and ambiguity
arise from the overarching assumption that some object or
event defined as art caused a corresponding experience or re-
sponse defined as aesthetic. If we are uncertain about the
nature of the art object, then we are destined to be uncertain
about the experience we associate with it.
The concept of aesthetic experience is, nevertheless, cru-
cial for art educators because it resides the point of greatest
concern: the art student. John Dewey (1943) believed that
aesthetic experience extends beyond art to all dimensions of
human life. Mathematical equations, scenic views of the land-
scape, one's vegetable garden—all these are possible venues
for aesthetic experience. The postmodernist agrees that aes-
thetic experience can occur with non-art artifacts or with na-
tural phenomena as well as with art. But while aesthetic experi-
ence with art is the paradigm case, that is to say, the proto-
type for aesthetic experience, important differences may
exist among aesthetic experiences situated in these three con-
texts, and these differences may be qualitative or quantitative.
Philosopher J.O. Urmson (1957) considered aesthetic ex-
perience demonstrably different from religious experience,
intellectual experience and, educational experience. What,
then, are the distinguishing features of aesthetic experience?
His answer was that aesthetic experience is not determined
288 Critical Art Pedagogy

exclusively by the nature of the art object, but rather by the

nature of the human reaction to it. More specifically, aesthet-
ic experience occurs when one perceives the object as compel-
ling or attractive or preferable because of a reason or interest
separate from the object's so called "real appearance" or
function. Thus Urmson located aesthetic experience within
the person—the artist or the individual encountering art—
rather than inherent in the object, an appealing position for
critical art pedagogy since it complements its cognitive and
postmodern foundations.
Exponents of other perspectives on the nature of aesthet-
ic experience have either explicitly or implicitly proposed
object-centered explanations. In emphasizing the nature of
the object as the source or determinant of aesthetic experi-
ence, these perspectives separate the object from the artist
and art observer, thereby de-emphasizing the human dimen-
sion in aesthetic experience. A n object-centered, autotelic
aesthetics posits a causal relation with primacy assigned to the
art object as a determinant of aesthetic experience and the hu-
man element secondary. The art object functions as a stimulus
that inexorably elicits a singular form of aesthetic experience
in those persons endowed with the appropriate "high art"
sensitivities and sensibilities to receive it. This object-centered
concept presents aesthetic experience as a nomothetic and
stable psychological phenomenon expressed as an observable
behavior. Object-centered theories propose, then, that the
proper path to understanding the nature of aesthetic experi-
ence is through a study of the object. Object-centered study
focuses specifically on the physical, formal and iconic proper-
ties of the artwork as though they were absolutes.
Object-centered theories of aesthetic experience dominate
the history of art education. Epistemologically, they rest on
the aesthetic ideology known as "naive formalism," the belief
that aesthetic value resides physically in the object or phe-
nomenon as a property manifest in a pleasing configuration of
the traditional design elements including line, shape or form,
texture, value, and color. (Note that value refers to degree of
light and dark.) Other physical properties of the object also
come into play: scale and the materials used. Formal
properties are contrasted with the iconic aspects of the work.
Aesthetics for Critical Praxis 289

"Iconic" refers to meanings symbols create. Formal properties

are physical, and object-centered theorists consider them to be
objectively observable—that is, capable of being seen and
experienced the same way by all people endowed with normal
sensory apparatus. They are, in other words, self-evident. In
the terms of naive formalism, the goal of art is to reproduce
accurately the appearance of the physical world. Art is
supposed to be a two-dimensional facsimile of a human's
objective view.
Critical consciousness rejects the idea of the self-referenc-
ing art object and considers normal sensory apparatus only
one requirement for an apperception of the aesthetic value
supposedly inherent in an art object's formal properties. In
fact, the more powerful determinants consisting of social,
economic, political factors supersede the salience of sensory
apparatus to aesthetic experience and establish the potency
and potential of art as an instrument of power and oppression
on one hand and an instrument of critical education and eman-
cipation on the other.
Images of students copying simplistic, idealized outlines
and geometric designs, assignments that characterized the art
instruction issuing from the economic needs of nineteenth cen-
tury by Massachusetts industrialists, exemplify formalist aes-
thetics' influence on traditional art instruction. Such pedago-
gical practices dominated art instruction from the nineteenth
century down to the present day, and Arthur Wesley Dow's
analytic system of design lives on as a compelling example of
art instruction based on object-centered concepts of aesthetic
experience.
Critical aesthetics recognizes that naive formalism general-
ly relies on expert opinion to reify aesthetic value as facts to
be taught—or more properly, inculcated. Traditional art
education implicitly and explicitly works to make students'
aesthetic experiences match those of connoisseur-experts in
thrall to the high art of the archive. Further, the preoccupa-
tion of traditional art education with formalist assumptions
has led to the impression that only those who have been
successfully prepared (or indoctrinated) and are sufficiently
attuned to aesthetic values in the rigid forms associated with
formalist presumptions can enjoy aesthetic experiences.
290 Critical Art Pedagogy

Formalist determinations of "talent," conceived of as an abili-

ty to reproduce art works closely approximating archive-ap-
proved formal properties and that generally serving power
interests, similarly regulate the accesses to art making.
Philosopher Suzanne K . Langer formulated a particularly
influential object-centered theory of aesthetic experience in
1957, when she published her book, Problems of Art. The
intellectual climate in which Langer wrote was, of course,
dominated by the culture of positivism, which elevated science
as the authorized form of knowledge. Two main elements of
the scientific method are reductionism and differentiation.
The first entails the analysis of phenomena by breaking them
down into irreducible components. The second entails identi-
fying precisely what essential component distinguishes one
class of phenomena from every other class.
For Langer, the problems of the nature of art and aesthet-
ic experience amounted to finding the sine qua non, the
essential component that only art possessed. Langer broke
with traditional thinking in aesthetics that viewed all art
forms as related in some essential, irreducible way. As we saw
earlier, she identified expressiveness as the essential com-
monality uniting all art objects. She argued, also, that each art
form had its own unique property, which she called the
"primary apparition." In painting, for example, the primary
apparition is pictorial space. She referred to the "ironic
illusion" of the three dimensions artistic conventions create
on a two-dimensional surface. The optical realism made
possible in the Renaissance by the invention of the laws of
perspective provides an example. For Langer, pictorial space,
the property of a painting that defines it as art, evokes
aesthetic experience. Without pictorial space, there would be
no aesthetic experience involved with paintings.
Suzanne Langer's philosophical speculations attracted
scientific attention. In his book, A Psychology of Pictorial
Perception, John Kennedy (1975) presented the view that the
central problem for theories of art and aesthetic experience is
how to account for both direct and indirect pictorial percep-
tion. Pictorial perception theorists refer to an artificially
treated surface such as a painting or a page of print, as a
"display." They define "direct perception" as the perception
Aesthetics for Critical Praxis 291

of the physical dots or marks on the surface of the display—

for example the halftone dots that comprise newspaper photo-
graphs. "Indirect perception" refers to the perception of the
marks or dots as something else, like a still life, a landscape,
or a portrait. We need indirect perception to perceive a dis-
play as a picture and to form meaning from it. Psychologists
try to explain why some visual displays allow only direct per-
ception and some allow both. The palette on which the artist
mixes colors or paint drippings on the floor exemplify dis-
plays that allow only direct perception. A painting allows
both. The scientific study of this question is characterized by
an interest in the properties of the object as a cause of effects
like aesthetic experience in an observer.

Aesthetic Experience as Behavior

Object-centered concepts of aesthetic experience like those of
Kennedy and Langer implicitly treat the observer as a passive
receiver, essentially Locke's blank slate, rather than as an
active agent with a role to play in the construction of aesthet-
ic experience. The psychological aesthetics of Gustav Fechner
(1876) and, much later, later D . E. Berlyne (1971) are also
grounded in the object-centered tradition. While psychological
aesthetics entertains assumptions which place it among the
object-centered theories of aesthetic experience, it introduced
a new focus of inquiry: the relation of aesthetic behavior to
aesthetic experience. Psychological aesthetics is the domain
of aesthetics most heavily influenced by the culture of posi-
tivism. Essentially a branch of experimental psychology, it
began in the mid-nineteenth century in the same German
psychology laboratories that produced physiological psychol-
ogy and psychophysics.
In 1865, having established his preeminence as an experi-
mental psychologist, Gustav Fechner turned his prodigious
intellect to the problem of aesthetic experience. Part scien-
tist, part mystic, part philosopher, Fechner sought to study
aesthetics "from below" (Arnheim, 1986). B y this phrase,
Fechner signaled his intention to apply the relatively new
induction- and observation-based scientific method to an in-
tellectual field that belonged exclusively to speculative philo-
sophers. Fechner conceived of aesthetic experience as a con-
292 Critical Art Pedagogy

struct, and he defined it in operational terms. In other words,

he assumed that aesthetic experience is a phenomenon that ac-
tually takes place, but that one can find only indirect evidence
of its existence. Furthermore, evidence of aesthetic experi-
ence could be found only in the observable, measurable behavi-
or of individuals in (more or less) scientifically controlled
situations. His operational definition of aesthetic behavior con-
sisted of verbal expressions of liking or disliking. Fechner also
assumed that aesthetic behavior, like other forms of behavior
he had investigated in his laboratory, was a response to a phy-
sical stimulus, in this case, an art object.
In 1865, Fechner conducted an investigation of the Gol-
den Section, a centuries-old formula that purports to explain
the secrets of beauty. The Golden Section formula specifies
that the most beautiful (or by Fechner's operational definition
of the aesthetic behavior construct, the "most preferred") ob-
ject or shape or proportion will be obtained when the shorter
dimension of (for instance) a rectangle is in the same propor-
tion to the longer dimension that the longer dimension is to
the sum of both dimensions. Fechner cut out ten cardboard
rectangles of varying proportions, one of which corresponded
to the Golden Section ratio. More subjects, about 35 percent
of the sample of 300, preferred the Golden Section rectangle
to any other. Regardless of the degree to which one can gener-
alize Fechner's results, the assumptions underlying his work
advanced empirical aesthetics as a field of inquiry pursued
actively and continuously from his era to the present. Since
Fechner's initial work, more than 400 studies on this topic
have appeared.
Fechner also assumed that the physical properties of the
stimulus—that is to say, its formal and stylistic properties—
evoke the same aesthetic response in all human subjects regard-
less of whether the elements appear in works of art recognized
as masterpieces or in two-dimensional graphic designs con-
structed solely for purposes of psychological experimentation.
Along with Fechner's working definition of aesthetic experi-
ence as a liking or disliking response to a physical stimulus,
this assumption cast a long shadow on subsequent inquiry into
aesthetic experience.
Aesthetics for Critical Praxis 293

The major figure in twentieth century empirical aesthet-

ics, D.E. Berlyne, built directly upon Fechner's foundations.
Berlyne formalized a theory of empirical aesthetics in terms
compatible with the prevailing school of psychology of his
time, behaviorism. He sought to produce through experi-
mental methods sufficient evidence of causal links between the
properties of the stimulus and aesthetic behavior as he opera-
tionally defined it.
Berlyne conceptualized aesthetic behavior as arousal
operationally defined, in turn, in three observable ways: verbal
ratings of liking or disliking, exploratory behavior, and psycho-
physical measures. Verbal ratings were believable enough as
markers of aesthetic experience, being exemplified by such
more or less direct question-and-answer formats as the widely
used semantic differential and Likert scales. In fact, Berlyne
and other behaviorists frequently used such forced-choice
instruments as Likert, Thurstone, and semantic differential
scales which elicited responses with little or no opportunity
accorded their subjects for open-ended responses. Exploratory
behavior consisted of such measures as measurements of
looking time. Berlyne's confederates would record the time a
subject took to examine an art work. They also recorded such
psychophysical measures as respiration rate, pupil dilation,
and galvanic skin response presumed to be indices of aesthetic
response.
O f the three dubious operational definitions of aesthetic
behavior, the latter seems the most implausible. One need not
venture far into psychology's research literature to find
compelling evidence repudiating the use of these physical
measures as unequivocal manifestations of aesthetic experi-
ence. Schacter's 1964 work on emotional labeling found little
physiological difference among various emotional states
(Gergen, 1991). Increases in blood pressure, galvanic skin
response, respiration, heart rate, and so forth, all normally
accompany emotional states ranging from hate and fear to
love and ecstacy. By no means should anyone accept
Berlyne's narrow operationalization of aesthetic behavior on
face value; critical thinkers will surely remain skeptical of
claims that changes in any of these measures indicate authen-
294 Critical Art Pedagogy

tic aesthetic experiences. In the language of science, the use

of these measures entails "serious internal validity problems."
Serious external validity problems exist as well. A s we
have seen, researchers in physiological aesthetics employed
two types of stimuli to evoke aesthetic response, actual
artworks and graphic displays like line and shape configura-
tions similar to those that might appear on an eye test chart.
The investigators generalized their results without determining
possible differences among their various operational measures
of aesthetic behavior attributable to the different types of
stimuli. In a meta-analysis of experimental studies of aesthetic
preference, Cary (1991) found that studies using actual art-
works as stimuli reported greater aesthetic responses than
studies using non-art graphic stimuli.
From the critical perspective, severe reductionism and nar-
row operationalism, the hallmarks of behavioristic research
simply fail to convincingly capture the nature of aesthetic
experience. The behaviorism-inspired inquiry into the nature
of aesthetic experience reifies the art object as a stimulus and
separates it from the individual subject whose experience with
the art object receives attention only in terms of how it was
shaped by the object's formal and physical properties. This
circularity appears to exclude the possibility of aesthetic
experience rather than illuminate it. In their 1975 review of
aesthetic preference research, George Hardiman and Theodore
Zernich concluded that about all we know from these studies is
that some people prefer some art and some people prefer
other art. Beyond identifying a blind alley to avoid, the entire
line of research in empirical aesthetics is devoid of applica-
tions to art education, critical or otherwise. In addition to its
abundant internal and external validity problems, this research
is irrelevant to art pedagogy of any kind, mainly because few
art instructors care to treat their students like subjects in an
experiment. Nor can they conceive of aesthetic experience as
interpretable by a simple physiological response like a respira-
tion rate.

Questions of Aesthetic Value

The third major question of aesthetics is valuative, and it takes
forms like these: "What is the nature of aesthetic value?"
Aesthetics for Critical Praxis 295

"What is valuable in art?" and "Is this particular artwork good

art?"
To repeat an irony we observed earlier, the aesthetic
theories of contemporary critical theory's Teutonic progeni-
tors, the Frankfurt School, presented a serious obstacle to the
development of a theoretical base for critical art pedagogy.
Although acutely interested in aesthetics, members of the
Frankfurt school conceptually bifurcated the art world into
high art and low art, an egregious binary opposition. More-
over, they conceived of aesthetics as "macro-aesthetics" that
surveyed the aesthetic dimensions of culture and cultural
reproduction, rather than as a philosophy of art encountered
by individuals in their lived experiences. It is possible to extra-
polate from their work a theory of micro-aesthetics with aes-
thetic value situated in or emergent from the individual's
aesthetic experience. Moreover, such an understanding is cen-
tral to the conceptual foundations of critical art pedagogy.
The early critical theorists saw aesthetics bound up in the
very definition of culture, a definition that reveals a strong
Marxist influence on the development of critical thought.
Horkheimer, for example, conceived of culture as the total
collection of ideas, beliefs, practices, norms, artistic expres-
sions that emerge from organized social life (Held, 1980); and
Herbert Marcuse (1968) recognized two processes at work in
the emergence of culture: the reproduction of ideas and the
reproduction of material entities. Early critical theorists
proceeded to divide culture into high culture and bourgeois
culture on this basis, and they clearly ascribed greater value to
ideational cultural forms than to the material forms. Iden-
tifying the two dimensions of culture, Marcuse used the terms
"intellectual" and "material." Material culture included day-
to-day life and the production of commodities. (He sometimes
referred to material culture as "civilization.") Intellectual
culture included science, humanities, religion and art—all of
the so-called "higher" values. (Marcuse sometimes used the
term "spiritual world" for intellectual culture.)
Critical art pedagogy finds the distinction between high
and low culture problematic because it created a hierarchy that
excludes the popular culture of daily life, equating it with mass
culture, bourgeois culture, consumer culture, manipulative ad-
296 Critical Art Pedagogy

vertizing and various entertainment forms, and other manifes-

tations of supposedly vulgar "low taste." This binary opposi-
tion devalues the importance and value of daily lived experi-
ence, the very human context salient to critical art pedagogy
because the life world is the very site of art-as-praxis.
In the Frankfurt School's version of macro-aesthetics, low
culture reflects and reproduces society's power hierarchy by
inculcating the unaware middle classes with low tastes and
consumer-driven values. The Frankfurt School considered
bourgeois aesthetics and culture decidedly lowbrow, equivalent
to mass culture and consumer culture. Critical thinkers have,
of course, since called the modernist assumptions to which the
Frankfurt School clung into question and disavowed them. But
history has so far failed to provided philosophers with a
workable distinction between popular culture and a bourgeois
culture that includes consumerist propaganda, advertizing, dis-
tracting entertainment, and other manipulative cultural forms.
Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse, and Benjamin could hardly
have conceived of a critical emancipatory function for an art
of the people or of a universally accessible aesthetic experi-
ence based on the engagement of art in the context of the
banal particularities of everyday life. Most members of the
Frankfurt School uncritically accepted Adorno's distinctions
between high art, avant garde art, and bourgeois or mass
culture art and ignored the implicit value hierarchy. Adorno
and his colleagues defined high art as art that resisted assimila-
tion into production and commodification processes. B y
virtue of its resistance, this high art represented for them the
unreconciled protest that continually works against forces of
domination. Low art was that which promotes or capitulates
to these forces.
Adorno characterized the process by which high art
transacted its protest as the realm of the particular opposing
the realm of the universal (Held, 1980). He meant that high
art's resistance to commodification occurs in the immediacy
of the present, at this particular time and in this particular
place and experienced by this individual. O f course, the particu-
larity of daily lived experience provided the source of mean-
ing, the context in which high art could wage its emancipatory
struggle, but this connection eluded Adorno. One must avoid
Aesthetics for Critical Praxis 297

conceiving those external forces on which the dominant

modernist and positivist culture has spuriously conferred the
status of universal verity as impinging upon or determining
the experienced reality of the particular. Experts should not
determine the value of individual experience; nor need they be
required for validation.
For Adorno, aesthetic value turned on the transcendence
embodied in the perennial choice now central to our analysis:
to struggle against or acquiesce in forces of domination. Ador-
no considered art that furthers this struggle art of the high
culture; while art that capitulates is bourgeois. But the Frank-
furt School saw the theater of this struggle as societal, not
individual. Today's postmodern perspective situates the criti-
cal choice in the consciousness of individuals. The ability to
struggle determines the value of art for the individual as well
as for the group. We gladly preserve the intuition of the
Frankfurt School that aesthetic value is linked to art that
instigates a struggle against domination as a foundation for
critical art pedagogy, but we would discard its implicit assump-
tion that macro-aesthetics is the authorized source of aesthet-
ic value. Critical art pedagogy must reject the Frankfurt
School tendencies to assign secondary status to aesthetic value
enacted in the lived experience of the particular individual and
to tacitly promote the theory that aesthetic value requires
nomothetic status for legitimacy. These tendencies emerged
from the HIGH ART-1OW art binary opposition still imposed
upon traditional school art programs that, in effect, colonize
students' personal art worlds by consigning the art of the
popular culture to the low art category.
Critical art pedagogy embraces art and aesthetics as instru-
mental to its aims. It recognizes that the issues of aesthetic
value and aesthetic experience are much too complex to be
reduced to a duality based solely on their potential for direct
revolutionary action. To become an element of praxis, art
and aesthetics must incorporate the conscious, lived aesthetic
experience and the formation of value and meaning that result
from connecting the individual art world with the life world,
hence Adorno's "particularity." Critical art pedagogy aims to
connect life worlds to art worlds and to transform the school
art world by connecting it to our students' art worlds. The art
298 Critical Art Pedagogy

world is, you recall, the total set of meanings, codes, ideas,
criteria and historical references—all those factors supplied by
the culture—that permits one to recognize or define an object
as art or a phenomenon as aesthetic and then determine the
relative value (aesthetic and economic) that ensues from this
definition. We transact the art world in lived experience.
When integrated with critical consciousness and emancipatory
action, connections between personal art worlds and life
worlds and between life worlds and the school art world be-
come the defining features of critical art pedagogy: individual
engagement in art-as-praxis.
Adorno's connection between the particular and the
universal furthers the processes of critical aesthetic valuing
and knowledge making because it emphasizes the importance
of the formal properties of the art object in critical art peda-
gogy. Horkheimer, Marcuse and Benjamin believed with
Adorno that the art object's formal properties portray the
particular world in various ways. In high art, this portrayal
refers to or enacts the ideal world. High art transcends the
banality of present particulars, rejects conventional ways of
seeing them, and thus escapes the reification of the formal
properties inherent in the modernist-inspired processes that
result in commodification of the art object, and ultimately, in
a capitulation to forces of domination that marginalize art
and art education. If critical art pedagogy embraces Adorno's
conception of the struggle in art of the particular against the
universal, then art can realize its potential to open aesthetic
ways of knowing and valuing, to the alternatives available to
codified ways of knowing and valuing in the "real world."
Artistic and aesthetic knowing and valuing have subversive
functions and emancipatory potential.
A naive, reactionary suspicion of technology clouded the
Frankfurt School's aesthetic understandings. In the 1930s and
even in the 1940s, much of the technological milieu remained
oriented to the nineteenth century, and it made sense to view
mechanical reproduction of artifacts—photographs, for exam-
ple—as a devaluing, vulgarizing social force appealing only to
bourgeois tastes. Other ways to understand photographs had
yet to be realized. The members of the Frankfurt School took
at face value the words of French painter Paul Delaroche who,
Aesthetics for Critical Praxis 299

upon seeing his first photograph, declared that painting died

the day photography was born (Davis, 1995). In 1859, Char-
les Baudelaire, the French poet and critic, published an article
claiming that photography had become a haven for no-talent
painters and predicting that photography would contribute to
the debasement of the French creative genius (Davenport,
1991). Benefiting today from the postmodern perspective, we
realize that we may not always take photographs to be objec-
tive evidence (Sontag, 1973).
Understandably influenced by their economic orientation,
members of the Frankfurt School promulgated an aesthetics of
supply and demand: the more available the cultural artifact or
experience, the less value it has. This reasoning left the
Frankfurt School with an aesthetics that, as we have seen,
polarized high art and popular art. The art of the archive
superseded the "vulgar" art of daily life. Individual art worlds
were subject to valuation to the degree that they subscribed to
the art of the archive. Under this aesthetics, art education
fulfilled a regulatory function. Art and aesthetic value and
aesthetic experience were protected entities, available to only
a few. Bourgeois culture became simply anything excluded
from the archive. Bourgeois culture reproduced social inequi-
ties and so confined its admiring, unwitting adherents to their
dual roles as agents for and victims of the status quo. Only
high culture was thought capable of promoting emancipatory
ends.
In the 1950s and 1960s, however, the art world became
more aware of the daily life lived in the popular culture as an
iconic treasure trove. Its visual richness and complexity, at-
tributable in part to the mechanical reproduction technologies
Marxists and the Frankfurt School despised, gradually qualified
it as fit subject matter for the art of high culture. In fact, the
rich, complex vastness of mid-twentieth century daily life
gained recognition as culture itself—that is to say, popular
culture, not a decadent or atavistic version of high culture.
Warhol's soup can, Rauschenburg's work, advertizing images,
even alphabetic print designs—all were decontextualized and
assigned new significance in the art world. These develop-
ments hardly glorified daily life or popular culture as resources
for high art, like the genre painting of the Northern Renais-
300 Critical Art Pedagogy

sance. But in art's treatment of daily life and popular cultural

forms, one saw that popular culture, particularly its visual
dimensions, contained subversive potential.
Ironically, contemporary critical aesthetics underscores
the difference between art and so-called "reality"—that is, the
objective world—by connecting with the two in the creation
of a context for critical knowledge and action. As Held (1980)
observed, critical art recognizes the distinctions between
images and the actual objects to which they refer. The alter-
native, bourgeois art and aesthetics, perpetuates the status quo
by obscuring or denying this distinction, thereby disconnecting
art from lived experience. Bourgeois aesthetics awards the
status of "good" art to self-referential art objects which are,
by definition, separate from day-to-day reality. This permits
bourgeois aesthetics to require art to reflect the bourgeois ver-
sion of an ideal world. Bourgeois art is uncritically expected to
portray the "best" or the "highest" moral values, with "best"
and "highest" understood as those values consistent with the
interests of the powerful. Like other Utopian visions, it pro-
jects a world that, to a critical consciousness, reveals only
impossibilities.
Critical aesthetics, on the other hand, situates aesthetic
value in the other real world, the world of the particular that
individuals engage and construct in living experience. Affirm-
ing the importance of connectedness as a principal aesthetic
value, critical art pedagogy also situates emancipatory action
and praxis in the same real world. These entities are inacces-
sible through some aesthetic fugue; they are transacted in the
world of the particular. Critical aesthetics connects to the life
world where commodification, power and domination operate,
and it seeks to confront rather than escape these forces.
Critical aesthetics reveals alternatives that can be envisioned
in an ideal world, but which can and must be enacted in the
world of lived experience. Thus, critical aesthetics is an aes-
thetics of connectedness. Horkheimer understood the dangers
of a Utopian aesthetics that promises an ideal as an isolated
realm beyond the exigencies of actuality.
For the critical art education project, the Frankfurt
School's distinction between high and low art poses difficulties
because one task on the critical agenda is to close the politi-
Aesthetics for Critical Praxis 301

cized gaps between personal art worlds, the school art world,
and the high culture art world of the archive. A s the gaps
close, individuals question how their personal art worlds are
formed and malformed. They also come to understand how
the art world reserves art for the reproduction of the status
quo through an art education system and culture industry that
downloads decontextualized expert opinion as aesthetic au-
thenticity and positions these versions as ultimate endpoints
toward which the many lumpen-proles must strive but only
the talented few will gain.

The Preoccupation with

Beauty in Mainstream Aesthetics
Traditional aesthetics has long positioned beauty as its
primary determinant of aesthetic value, a presumption pre-
senting the task of articulating theoretical foundations for
critical praxis in art education additional challenges. The asso-
ciation between beauty and aesthetic value has become so
entrenched that it inhabits everyday discourse as simple com-
mon sense. Artistic value, everyone knows, is all about beauty.
Even in academic circles, aesthetics is the philosophy of the
beautiful or the systematic study of beauty (Crawford, 1987;
Lankford, 1992).
Beauty is, of course, indescribably difficult to discuss in
concrete terms. Perhaps, "pleasurable attraction" is a useful
working definition. In the course of installing the causal asso-
ciation between beauty and artistic value in the popular con-
sciousness, beauty became reified: It came to be thought of as
a physical property of the art object, artifact, or natural ob-
ject or phenomenon. Like size, shape, color, beauty existed in
varying quantities. Objects and phenomena in the world came
to be described as more or less beautiful, then ranked accord-
ingly. Beauty was conceptualized as a perceptible, knowable
and stable property like any other property of a physical
object or phenomenon. With its reification, beauty also became
the aesthetic stimulus that evoked pleasure, or the "aesthetic
response." In fact, the experience of pleasure as a response to
beauty became the prototypical aesthetic experience. Where-
as beauty became the virtually exclusive embodiment of aes-
302 Critical Art Pedagogy

thetic value, pleasure became the virtually exclusive embodi-

ment for aesthetic experience.
In our current grim, Calvinistic, de-eroticized culture, the
primacy of beauty in aesthetic value and experience has ac-
quired a pejorative connotation. In a latter-day resurrection of
Plato's hedonophobia, aesthetic experience is considered dan-
gerously escapist, a potentially destabilizing force to be dis-
couraged. Its implicit hedonism alone helps relegate art and
aesthetics to the margins of the culture and to restrict access
to art across social classes. The hedonic model of aesthetic
value and experience would reserve the pleasures of art and
other aesthetic phenomena to the service of the elite classes,
who deserve them and can safely handle them and can proper-
ly appreciate them. The beauty-pleasure model thereby prom-
ulgates the ideological conditions under which the art world
becomes vulnerable to power interests. For the sake of social
control, art, aesthetic experience and pleasure in general re-
quire regulation like other falsely reified commodities.
Critical praxis in art and art education hardly rejects the
concepts of beauty and pleasure. Instead, it focuses on how
oppressive social and cultural forces counterfeit them. Critical
art pedagogy focuses on the limitations that ensue from a pre-
occupation with beauty and pleasure as virtually the only
forms of aesthetic value and aesthetic experience. In fact, crit-
ical art pedagogy proposes that as the struggle for emancipa-
tory goals succeeds, beauty and pleasure will pervade conscious-
ness and experience even more extensively. Critical praxis in
art education includes actions designed to open access to beauty
and pleasure without reference to class differences.
The one-dimensional definitions of beauty as aesthetic
value and pleasure as aesthetic experience inherently separate
beauty from lived experience. Beauty becomes misconceived
as an abstract, external stimulus lying in wait to evoke a
prescribed response. As a property of the physical art object,
beauty is analogous to positivism's insistence on the validity
of value-free facts. The reification of beauty as aesthetic value
is another means by which aesthetic value became situated in
the physicality of the art object. This licensed naive
formalism and mimesis to linger as twin currencies in the art
world long past the time when their value expired. Observe
Aesthetics for Critical Praxis 303

traditional art education, which plods along unawares as the

major vector of formalism-based mis-instruction.
With artistic value reified by formalist assumptions, the
aesthetic value of a particular art object becomes a closed
issue, an absolute entity knowable by experts who pass it on to
the neophytes. Reified aesthetic value prompts automatic
claims to objectivity; the principal claim being that aesthetic
experience with a particular art object is the same for every-
one. Traditional art pedagogy reserves aesthetic experience
for those willingly repress their own experience and conform
by showing that they experience art in prescribed ways.

An Aesthetics of Meaning and Connectedness

Critical art pedagogy requires a reformulation of the tradi-
tional hedonic model that installs beauty and pleasure as the
exclusive, prototypical forms of aesthetic value and aesthetic
experience. This model led to an obsessive preoccupation with
its own components and a neglect of other aesthetic possibili-
ties. It invited the reification of aesthetic value and isolated
that value from lived experience as a physical property re-
sident in an independent, self-referential art object.
Thus, the crucial task for critical aesthetics is t o reconceptu-
alize aesthetic value in accordance with influences from the per-
spectives of critical theory, critical constructivism, cognitive
and discursive psychologies, deconstruction, and semiotics.
When we accept the art object as a text, we see that its values
may be multiform. As text, these values must be enacted by com-
plex processes of perception, interpretation, reflection, and
connection. Meanwhile, one must negotiate relational mean-
ing and value with others. These processes construct aesthetic
values in the context of lived experience at particular times
and in particular places by particular individuals. In critical
aesthetics and critical pedagogy, one constructs aesthetic val-
ue in experience, rather than discovering it mysteriously glow-
ing on an art object or aesthetic phenomenon like some phlog-
iston. Aesthetic value constructed by active cognitive proces-
ses in the context of semiotics- and deconstruction-based dis-
course amounts to a form of meaning and a form of aesthetic
knowing, "meaning" here referring to the relational assign-
ment of concepts, qualities or precepts to perceived entities.
304 Critical Art Pedagogy

While beauty has a place as an aesthetic value in critical

aesthetics, it must not supersede meaning. The traditional
beauty-pleasure model is an analogue of the stimulus-response
model: a stimulus directly eliciting a response that bypasses
our human cognitive, perceptual and semiotic functions. N o
meaning can occur unless it is subsidiary to the reflex of re-
sponse to stimulus; meaning is a mere byproduct or reverber-
ating overtone.
The critical model rejects beauty as an aesthetic value i f
one posits beauty as an independent stimulus that ineluctably
evinces a single, preordained aesthetic response or experience.
Nor can critical aesthetics entertain beauty as an exclusionary
aesthetic value. It constructs beauty in the context of lived
experience. As beauty emerges from that context, it is subject
to the shaping of individual and cultural factors. Critical aes-
thetics finds nomothetic, objective beauty inconceivable. In-
stead, the critical model inserts complex human meaning-
formation processes between the stimulus and response,
requiring only these processes. In critical aesthetics, beauty
retains its definition as a felt experience of compelling, en-
gaging attractiveness, but it does not retain its role as stimulus
or its exclusive status as the prototype of aesthetic value. In
critical aesthetics, aesthetic value and aesthetic experience
intertwine to form meaning. As such, they combine to be-
come aesthetic knowing, a foundation of critical art pedagogy.
Although traditional aesthetics focuses mainly on beauty,
such qualities as the sublime, the ineffable, the timeless also
appear prominently in its discourse. In this discourse, the in-
effable, the sublime and the timeless evoke aesthetic experi-
ence and are treated as objective, stable properties physically
present in the formal dimensions of the aesthetic object. The
ineffable, the sublime and the timeless are also considered rare,
peak human experiences that operate somehow as forces
external to normal daily life and lived experience. Critical
aesthetics replaces the traditional concept of aesthetic experi-
ence as a heightened experience evoked by objective qualities
with a concept of aesthetic experience as a consciously
constructed cognitive reality that pervades lived experience
and is manifested as social justice, peace and freedom from
poverty, political systems' oppression, and so forth. Critical
Aesthetics for Critical Praxis 305

aesthetic experience relies on a subjectively felt awareness of

meaningfulness and connectedness as its primary aesthetic
quality, one that pervades everyday life and attached to
particular times, places, and individual realities. Critical aes-
thetics considers beauty culturally and politically determined
in concert with power interests. It also examines the functions
of beauty, aesthetic experience and art in society and the con-
sequences for individuals.
Critical aesthetics rejects the concept of an art world iso-
lated from the life world. The idea that art exists independent
from lived experience is as alien to the critical consciousness
as the positivist notion that facts are separate from values.
The traditional aesthetic position produces a cultural vacuum
that power interests rush to fill with experts, absolutes, and in-
equitable hierarchies. But the art world remains an integral
part of the life world despite the significant cultural forces
trying relegate it to the margins; both the life world and its
constituent art world remain living presences to students and
teachers engaged in critical art education.
A means toward emancipatory ends, critical aesthetics is
an indispensable resource for critical action. The aesthetics of
engagement in lived experience, meaning, and connectedness
brings such qualities of life as beauty and meaning into focus as
possibilities and rights for all. Traditional aesthetics, on the
other hand, emphasizes such qualities as the sublime, the inef-
fable, the infinite, the timeless, and similar abstractions that
connote and apotheosize detached, remote, exclusive experi-
ence fraught with nebulous, abstract phenomena rarely present
in actual life. The idea of "peak experience" central to
traditional aesthetics also requires that persons eligible for aes-
thetic experience possess certain pre-defined sensibilities that
conform to the power interests art is so often commandeered
to serve. Moreover, traditional aesthetics provides the concep-
tual instruments for sorting people into hierarchies. It teaches
that aesthetic experience is a privilege reserved for the elite,
rather than a fundamental part of all human life.
Critical aesthetics, by contrast reframes beauty, aesthetic
value, aesthetic experience, aesthetic knowing and aesthetic
meaning as normal and essential components of universal hu-
man experience, at least in the ideal world toward which the
306 Critical Art Pedagogy

critical project strives. Like critical approaches to other

disciplines, critical art pedagogy is avowedly idealistic, and
critical aesthetics helps art teachers and students envision the
possibilities to which life can aspire. Critical aesthetics partici-
pates in the emancipatory work of the larger critical project
by believing aesthetic experience to be universally accessible
in a just world. Nor need aesthetic experience be the same for
everyone; however, everyone should have the chance to
engage aesthetic experience in the course of life. In fact, the
integrating of aesthetic value and aesthetic experience pro-
vides a way of knowing. Aesthetic knowing, which allows one
to imagine what life can be, is dangerous knowledge, especially
if one suffers under oppressive cultural, economic, political, or
educational regimes. Struggling for the most fleeting glimpse
of aesthetic qualities in life can inspire and mobilize such a
person.

Connectedness as the Synthesis of

Aesthetic Experience and Value
The idea of connectedness as a synthesis of aesthetic value
and aesthetic experience complements critical aesthetics and
contributes to critical pedagogy's theoretical foundations be-
cause, like the philosophy of critical theory itself, it opens
space in critical aesthetic experience for both the mind and
the heart. In other words, it integrates the intellectual and the
emotional domains. The installation of pleasure as the pri-
mary form of aesthetic experience in traditional aesthetics
often entails only preference or forced choice: an approved
response to the stimulus of an art object. In critical aesthetics,
pleasure can arise from the critical awareness that connected-
ness is a primary aesthetic value that is formed in direct aes-
thetic experience. The value of connectedness emerges as
aesthetic experience rises above aesthetic preference to aes-
thetic judgment. Judgment entails reflection and internal dis-
course as components of meaning formation—which is to say,
cognitive construction of meaning and semiotic interpretation
of the art object as a text.
Making connections is making judgment, not merely stat-
ing a preference or responding. Connectedness and pleasure
complement one another. Connectedness replaces the inef-
Aesthetics for Critical Praxis 307

fable, the sublime and the timeless, which are aesthetic values
or forms of aesthetic experience necessary to a modernist aes-
thetics that considers the art object independent from experi-
ence. Critical aesthetics incorporates a discourse that uses figur-
ative language to connect disparate experiences or entities
into meaningful wholes. One entity is like another; therefore,
the two are related in experience. Metaphoric or connotative
language constructs connectedness.

Discourse
The incorporation of semiotics and discursive, cognitive and
critical constructivist components into critical aesthetics as a
foundation for art pedagogy deepens the question of the
nature of aesthetic experience. As we have seen, the modern-
ist-positivist models defined aesthetic experience as pleasure
and pleasure, in turn, as isolated, temporarily heightened ex-
perience. This definition confined pleasure to more or less ob-
servable behavioral manifestations.
The critical aesthetic model of aesthetic experience ex-
changes pleasure as a peak experience for a sense of connect-
edness as the prototype, criterion, or primary form of aesthet-
ic experience.
Pleasure remains an important form of aesthetic ex-
perience in critical aesthetics, which, however, refocuses it on
connectedness. Connectedness can be felt as an expanding one-
ness, or a unity in variety, or the intimate knowing of that
property of the whole which transcends the sum of its parts.
It is the experience of seeing how disparate entities reflect one
another. Critical aesthetics proposes connectedness as a felt,
demonstrable phenomenon arising from the recognition of
unity in diversity. It is the recognition of shared interests and
compatibilities. It is also the realization of the correlation be-
tween the particular and the general. Furthermore, unlike the
modernist notion of aesthetic experience as a peak experience,
it is sustainable. Sustainability makes aesthetic experience a
more accessible presence in the critical art classroom.

Aesthetic Value and Emancipatory Potential

To the critical mind, an important criterion for legitimizing
aesthetic values is their potential instrumentality in the eman-
308 Critical Art Pedagogy

cipation project. For Theodor Adorno, emancipation meant

freedom from privation, meaninglessness, degrading work,
hunger, segregation by class or race or gender, injustice and
conformity (Kellner, 1989). He did not expect that liberation
to evolve naturally from the mere absence of capitalism. We
learn from Adorno's work that, in fact, he saw emancipation
as a pro-active process: critical action carried out in societal
institutions such as the schools and the art world. The middle
classes cannot achieve emancipation through the bourgeois
aim of simply increasing production to the point of material
wealth for everyone. Oppressive structure and its ways of
thinking and acting at the individual level must be replaced by
a critical consciousness that inspires critical action leading to
a fullness of life. Emancipation requires critical action to oust
sources of oppression, not just simple increases in or a redistri-
bution of wealth. Such forms of critical action in the schools
as critical art pedagogy provide significant opportunities for
both students and teachers to engage in critical action inform-
ed by a critical consciousness.
Traditional art education fostered by modernist aesthetics
is characterized by the colonization of art worlds and life
worlds by the logic of scientific-technological rationality and
the cultural domination of experts who reproduce the asym-
metrical power hierarchy (Kellner, 1989). Critical aesthetics
and critical art history identify art that has resisted assimila-
tion into the bourgeois art world while retaining meaningful-
ness. Critical art pedagogy then struggles to separate art and
art education from capitalist processes of co-opting, com-
modification, and assimilation into the bourgeois art world.

Incorporating Critical Aesthetics

into Critical Art Pedagogy
The critical art pedagogy project embraces aesthetics as an
essential theoretical foundation for praxis in art and art educa-
tion. It also brings critical aesthetics to life in the school art
world and in the personal art worlds of our students. Certain
strategies promote this end, not as fixed routines or scripted
how-to methods, but rather as general principles to be enacted
at particular times and in particular places by particular
individuals.
Aesthetics for Critical Praxis 309

One strategy is to make aesthetics a living discourse. It

should be transacted in the everyday language of students and
critical teachers. This discourse should start with the subjec-
tive personal art experiences of individuals. Their insights,
preferences, biases, intuitions and half-thoughts provide the
substance of critical aesthetics. The discourse can focus on stu-
dent art work, works by living artists, or on authorized art
from the archive, with an eye toward how members get
assigned to various categories. Also, critical aesthetic discourse
must address the art world and the entire culture, not just
single art works and their dates, locations and schools; their
formal properties; and the artists' biographies. Students and
teachers can address how the various art worlds of the stu-
dents, of the school, and the archive come about; how each
change; and what socio-cultural functions each can serve.
Paying special attention, of course, to the student's personal
art world, critical art instructors help students determine how
the art worlds of the archive, the marketplace, and the school
relate to the individual's art world. They also identify how art
and art education can lead to critical consciousness and critical
action. Participants in critical art pedagogy must be en-
couraged to describe in their own terms their own lived aesthet-
ic experiences and to learn how they relate to the culture at
large.
Aesthetic discourse in critical art classrooms begins with
critical questions. Critical discourse in aesthetics involves
asking the critical questions about art and aesthetic experience
and value: How was the phenomenon under study shaped? In
whose interest was it shaped? How can critical aesthetic dis-
course become a part of personal art worlds and the school art
world? A s students describe their own subjective aesthetic
experiences and relate them to critical questions, the critical
discourse will reveal the ways in which their own art worlds are
colonized, and they will discover how the traditional aesthet-
ics and the archive concepts of aesthetic value and aesthetic
experience become culturally determined.
Here are more critical questions: Who defines art? Who
sets the aesthetic values and economic worth of art objects?
In whose interests do the definitions and values operate? How
can individuals determine artistic value? How do an individu-
310 Critical Art Pedagogy

al's artistic and aesthetic experiences in daily life relate to the

art world, to the archive, and to the school art world? What is
"talent" and how do we define, value, and use it? How has the
art of the archive been used to influence people? How can one
use art to support or to subvert the status quo?
One of the many contributions critical aesthetics makes
to critical art pedagogy is the freedom to ask these critical
questions. B y using a freedom—consciously enacting it—
people uphold, legitimize and preserve it. Critical aesthetics
thus constitutes the critical action of working toward eman-
cipatory goals by opening the schooling process to critical
questions. Critical aesthetics involves the subversive interro-
gation of controlling structures and official assumptions so as
to discover and expose the oppressive influences of power
interests. In this way, aesthetic knowledge contributes to the
formation of critical consciousness. Aesthetic knowledge, as
we have said, is dangerous knowledge. Aesthetic knowledge
revolves around connectedness and the synthesis of critical
aesthetic value and critical aesthetic experience. One attains
aesthetic knowing when one opens the knowledge process to
the subjective qualities of lived experience that expand mean-
ing beyond the reified, objective, decontextualized, pseudo-
values predetermined and handed down by experts as the
uncontested criteria for reality and truth. Aesthetic knowing,
like aesthetic experience and aesthetic value, expands beyond
art worlds into life worlds. Critical consciousness thrives when
aesthetic knowing is its integral element.

Art-As-Praxis
As art education starts to find its critical voice, a critical
aesthetics begins to create the terms for art-as-praxis.
"Praxis" means informed action directed toward emancipa-
tory ends. The concepts of art as aesthetic knowing and art-
as-praxis move beyond art as mere object-making and object-
seeing. Art-as-praxis implies the integration of art making
with reflecting about art and aesthetic experience as means of
knowing. In critical art pedagogy, the act o f making art
merges with critical consciousness of the complex relations
between the processes and techniques of making art, the art ob-
ject, the ideas and iconic elements, and the relevant but often
Aesthetics for Critical Praxis 311

shrouded social forces operating where art is created. We see

here the synthesis of art making and aesthetic experience.
Critical praxis, more generally, is action united with knowl-
edge and value in the struggle for emancipation and social
justice. Praxis is the process by which one constructs a critical
consciousness of reality; it is the process of world making. In
critical art pedagogy, the idea of art as critical praxis requires
an individual to integrate objective and subjective art worlds.
The objective art world consists of the world of art objects
constructed and seen in terms of their formal properties: line,
shape or form, value and color. The subjective art world in-
cludes impressions of art constructed in an individual's lived
experience. It also includes the sensuous engagement with
art's iconography and a sensed mysterious presence, perhaps
what Suzanne Langer called art's "primary apparition." Thus,
praxis is the inseparable integration of making and knowing
culminating in authentic aesthetic experience.
A n authentic aesthetic experience in critical art pedagogy
preserves the authentic by exposing the sources of educational
malpractice and showing how these forces distort lives. This
authentic aesthetic experience emerges from an encounter
between the individual and the art object, non-art artifact, or
natural phenomenon. Authentic aesthetic experience is the
process of creating individual art worlds and linking them in
meaningful ways to life worlds. Art worlds include codes
developed from engaged, conscious experience with art, from
continuing interpretations of art as a text, and from discourse
that guides the construction of meaning. Critical aesthetic ex-
perience and the creation of art worlds require praxis. Praxis
includes meaning construction, not just repeating internalized
prescribed responses to the formal properties of the artwork.
Critical aesthetics must first of all be emancipatory. Critical
aesthetics gives rise to critical consciousness that making,
experiencing, valuing and knowing about art—that is, art-as-
praxis—is an act of freedom. In short, art can tell the stories
the dominant culture would suppress.

Integrating Personal Art worlds into Life worlds

Another strategy for incorporating aesthetics into the prac-
tice of critical art pedagogy is to refocus on and re-emphasize
312 Critical Art Pedagogy

lived aesthetic experience as opposed to the instructional task

of fixing the degree of aesthetic value of the aesthetic object.
In traditional art instruction, the preoccupation with the aes-
thetic value of the object as a cause of aesthetic experience
imposes upon education the dreary task of transmitting reified
value judgments—or, downloading experts' opinions codified
as facts about aesthetic value. Instruction that emphasizes
critical aesthetic experience, by contrast, invites a discourse
about active involvement in art. It also welcomes thinking,
perceiving, valuing, and other active cognitive processes
important to learning. Emphasizing active aesthetic experi-
ences as content in critical art instruction accomplishes what
John Dewey (1934) referred to as the "work of art." Recall
that he used this terminology to refer less to the physical art
object than to the act of encountering and reflectively creat-
ing a personally experienced context of meaning for an art
work. Dewey's exploitation of the unexpected ambiguity of
the phrase's common meaning illustrates our need to place
our students' active experiences in the instructional spotlight.

Critical Art History and Criticism

As yet another strategy for the critical art classroom, we can
extend the liberating effects of asking critical questions to art
history and art criticism. The critical art historian asks many
of the same questions posed by critical aesthetics. Art history,
of course, treats of art and art worlds of the past in an
attempt to learn and show how they shaped the present. The
question critical art history might add to those of critical
aesthetics is How can we identify and understand the ways the
art of the past managed to escape assimilation into the bour-
geois culture? In other words, How did certain art objects
come to embody new meanings yet retain independence from
the processes of commodification and devaluation that seem
inevitable in the official art world? Students who ask questions
like these gain a sense of historicity. They can learn where, as
artists and art learners, they fit in the flow and machinations
of art worlds.
Though a linguistic inconvenience, critical art criticism is a
valuable component of critical art pedagogy. A n integral part
of art and art education, criticism presents significant oppor-
Aesthetics for Critical Praxis 313

tunities to engage students in active learning while developing

a critical consciousness. Terry Barrett (1990) conceptualized
art criticism as a process composed of three stages: descrip-
tion, interpretation, and evaluation. Although not inherently
critical (in the sense that informs our discussion), this frame-
work is readily applicable to critical art classrooms with one
significant modification: the addition of a fourth stage, an
investigation of the varieties of connectedness a given art
work entails.

Summary
In postmodern critical aesthetics, meaning and values join
beauty as primary concerns. Aesthetic experience can occur
with art, artifacts, or natural phenomena. Beauty, meaning, and
value are relational, constructed and contextual. They arise
out of interactions between individual experiences and cultural
processes, and they are open-ended. These tenets of post-
modern aesthetics move aesthetics out of the strictures of the
modernist cultural paradigm that reserves the art world for
promoting exclusive interests. Traditional aesthetics carries
out this process by defining beauty, aesthetic value, and mean-
ing (iconography) in restricted terms—that is, as facts to be
received or downloaded. These restricted definitions receive
sanction under the aegis of expert connoisseurs who regulate
access to art, art education, and aesthetic experience and
thereby preserve the art world they create as an instrument
for the private use of a small power elite. Art and aesthetic
experience can be powerful motive and emotive forces in
human relations, and defining art and aesthetic experience in
absolute terms keeps access to the high art archive away from
the undeserving and makes of it a tool for promoting the
interests of dominant groups. Expanding the scope of aesthet-
ics beyond beauty to include meaning decenters the conversa-
tion, subverting the high art world's hierarchy, and reveals the
high art world's one-dimensional socioeconomic functions.
Critical art pedagogy also centers art and aesthetics at the
core of living human experience. It focuses on the nature of
aesthetic experience in daily life rather than on the abstruse
formulations of art and beauty, most of them supposedly self-
referential, self evident, self-validating, and removed from
314 Critical Art Pedagogy

lived experience and values. The integration of critical aesthet-

ics into the theoretical foundations and practices of critical
art pedagogy promotes the formation of an individual's
personal art world and its links to the life world. Discourse
centered on critical aesthetics in the art classroom is informed
by semiotics and deconstruction. It is a cognitively active dis-
course which offers ritual-like opportunities to develop under-
standings that enact art-as-praxis.
The themes of art as critical praxis and the potential of crit-
ical aesthetics for emancipatory action suggest how critical art
pedagogy can help individuals become engaged in the struggle
to gain freedom from exploitation by the oppressive bourgeois
economic and political structures embedded in the dominant
culture's agenda. Art-as-praxis produces aesthetic knowledge,
and aesthetic knowing helps to bring to light truths suppressed
by other forms of knowing vulnerable to co-optation.
Critical aesthetics identifies how art and traditional art edu-
cation promote values and tastes complicit with the interests
of the powerful and dominant. It exposes cultural shills for the
dominant paradigm. Critical aesthetics identifies and stands
against all attempts to make aesthetics mime such positivist,
objectivist forms of art knowledge as naive realism. It also
resists attempts to locate aesthetic value, meaning and beauty
in the art object instead of in the individual's experience.
Critical aesthetic experience is a socially constructed, lived
reality. The active involvement of the individual in the con-
struction of aesthetic value, meaning and beauty that consti-
tutes the reality of aesthetic experience frees aesthetics and
art and art education to become emancipatory by subverting
the concept of the artist, the observer, and the art student as
passive entities who receive reified aesthetic values as facts.
We know these facts to be merely connoisseurs' opinions or
interpretations or descriptions of their own aesthetic experi-
ence elevated to the status of official knowledge. We know
this elevation to be part of a power-based, asymmetrical
hierarchy that dominates social relations along with such insti-
tutions as education and the art world. Critical aesthetics
reveals how these skewed forces undermine efforts to shape
these institutions into democratic forms.
Chanter Six

Models for Practice:

Prescriptive Grand Narratives or
Potential Resources for Critical Art Pedagogy?

Two systematic models for practice are currently available for

art education currently. These are Discipline-Based Art Educa-
tion ( D B A E ) and A R T S P R O P E L . The latter has attracted
scant attention since Howard Gardner introduced it in his
1989 article, "Zero-Based Arts Education: A n Introduction to
A R T S P R O P E L . However, the former has ascended to the
status of orthodoxy in art education as it is transacted in
professional organizations and the professional literature, and
pervades research and evaluation in the art education main-
stream. This chapter describes these two models and explores
their implications for critical practice.

Discipline-Based Art Education

Discipline-Based Art Education describes an instructional
model for visual art education developed in recent decades by
a shifting assemblage of persons working generally under the
sponsorship of The Getty Center for Education and the Arts
in Los Angeles, California. It begins with the premise that
since art comprises a valuable set of human activities, all stu-
dents should have meaningful learning experiences in the arts
as part of their general education. Further, these learning
experiences should include the art quadrivium: art production,
aesthetics, art history, and art criticism. Although there were
numerous antecedents, including Manuel Barkan, who dis-
cussed this idea as early as 1966, the model's official designa-
tion first appeared in the early 1980s. The Getty Center's
1985 publication, Beyond Creating: The Place for Art in
America's Schools, first described D B A E to a wide audience
316 Critical Art Pedagogy

consisting of public school art teachers, college professors,

and members of the main art educators' professional organi-
zation, the National Art Education Association. Two years
later, The Journal of Aesthetic Education devoted its entire
summer issue to scholarly descriptions, elaborations, and
implications of the D B A E model. Articles included D B A E ' s
history, its implications for teacher education, its relationship
to educational and developmental psychology, its interactions
with each of the four art discipline components, and an exten-
sive rationale that serves as a manifesto for the model.
Today, D B A E continues to be elaborated, evaluated, and
discussed.
Another central D B A E precept is that traditional prac-
tices in art education have long been predominantly weighted
toward art production, sometimes to the virtual exclusion of
the other three components. Ideally, according to D B A E , the
balance should be more or less equal among the four compo-
nents. Further, instruction in each area should be so ordered as
to offer meaningful connections with art to all students, not
just to the "talented" few who are adept at certain production
skills.
D B A E promotes art as a subject worthy of study for its
own sake rather than solely as an instrument for achieving
non-art related educational ends, as a refinement activity for
the elite, as a mysterious set of skills for the intuitive, or as a
recreational pursuit to be engaged in after the "serious" work
of learning the basics has been completed. D B A E ' s primary
goal is to develop a student's ability to understand and appreci-
ate art (Clark, Day and Greer, 1987). Increasing the student's
knowledge of concepts important to art, abilities to execute
processes to create art, and sensitivities so as to respond
meaningfully to art are all means to this goal. D B A E con-
ceives of instruction as a regularly administered systematic com-
ponent of the curriculum to be organized and planned at the
school system level and to be offered by trained art teachers.
As Gilbert Clark, Michael Day, and Dwaine Greer noted,
D B A E ' s goals for students resemble in structure and in tone
the expectations for students of science, math, history, and
other school subjects. This similarity helps establish art as an
essential component of general education, and the National
Models for Practice 317

Art Education Association has worked successfully for almost

a decade to influence states to require at least one course in art
for high school graduation. This emphasis on the inclusion of
art in the required set of courses marks a radical departure
from the implicit functions of art education as providing
refinement activities for the elite, a training program for
future professional artists, a recreational activity, an instruc-
tional vehicle for non-art educational outcomes, a vocational
course for students in training for industrial jobs, a means of
teaching other subjects, and an activity assumed to increase
certain desirable attributes like creativity.
D B A E also emphasizes the study of exemplary art works
by professional artists. As you know, critical theorists refer
pejoratively to such a body of work as the "archive." The
archive presents the "best" art, that art which in the judgment
of experts, exemplifies excellence and can transmit to stu-
dents the highest values. D B A E functions, at least implicitly,
to bring students as close as possible to the experts' judgments
and declarations.
From the perspective of critical theory, this D B A E tenet
depends both on an established archive of particular artworks
and on a more or less official party line of prescribed re-
sponses to be inculcated in students, both dependencies inimi-
cal to a critical arts pedagogy. Instead, while one can gain
much from the study of masterpieces, critical educators face
the challenge of finding ways to spread the awareness that the
archive complements a hierarchy of power that perpetuates
its own interests while excluding from the art world any per-
son or group that might conceivably pose a threat to its
power. A n over-reliance on the archive tends to affix to the
D B A E model a set of art works that is by definition resistant
to challenge and change.
A fixed set of masterpieces also leads to a fixed set of
canned, art appreciation-like aesthetic judgments formed by
connoisseurs then given to teachers to bestow upon students
as facts. Such a fixed set of responses stands between the stu-
dent and the art, limiting the educational process to repetition
of expert-derived facts. This instructional model widens the
gap between the school art world and the student art world.
D B A E ' s reliance on the archive renders it vulnerable to co-
318 Critical Art Pedagogy

optation and educational misuse. A critical arts pedagogy

cautions against this tendency of D B A E , detecting in it a
means of colonizing student art worlds.
Critical art pedagogy asserts that the archive may belong
in any art program, but not as the predominant or sole source
of art experiences and not as an unchallenged source of mean-
ing and value. Certainly the scholarship of art historians, aes-
theticians, and critics also belongs in the program. On the one
hand, the role of this scholarship should be to suggest, stimu-
late, challenge, and evoke sensibilities. On the other, it can
provide a focus for resistance. Progress toward the goal of
critical art pedagogy of discovering how artistic value has been
historically determined by asymmetrical power structures can
begin with examinations of the truth claims of traditional
scholarship. Beyond this desirable potential, any reliance on
expert judgments to establish the parameters of a student's
learning experiences with art reifies those judgments as facts
and places the student at the bottom of the knowledge hierar-
chy.
D B A E considers each of the four components of D B A E a
discipline per se, and a discipline has three essentials. The first
is a community of practitioners. Art historians, art critics,
philosophers interested in aesthetics, and the artists comprise
this community of practitioners. A second is a more or less
shared set of methods of inquiry or production. Each of the
four art disciplines has its own diverse, but identifiable, me-
thodologies. Art critics, for example, observe, reflect upon,
and arrive at value assertions about individual art works. In his
1990 book Criticizing Photographs, Terry Barrett summar-
ized the structure of critical methods that were developed
twenty-six years earlier by philosopher-critic Morris Weitz.
The steps in the critical method include description, interpre-
tation, evaluation, and theorizing. How one carries out each
of these steps can vary in such different schools of thought as
Modernism, postmodernism, feminist theory and Marxist the-
ory.
A third characteristic of a discipline is that it contains a
basic group of related concepts. Art production, for example,
is rooted in the conceptual framework of composition. Line,
shape or form, value, texture, and color—the elements of
Models for Practice 319

composition, are familiar concepts to virtually all artists and

art students. The concept of creative expression is another
example.
As its overarching idea, D B A E recommends that the con-
tent of the art curriculum be drawn from the four art disci-
plines as practiced by professionals or experts outside the
school context in the so-called "real world." The idea of the
four sub-disciplines may be adopted as a part of a critical arts
pedagogy, but the top-down orientation of D B A E is hardly
conducive to critical praxis. Its reliance on real-world experts
and the reification of their judgments as facts for students to
digest ignores the richest resource for critical art pedagogy,
the student art world. D B A E art instruction may, in fact, be so
driven by archive-based expert judgments that school art
activities—particularly in art criticism, art history, and aes-
thetics—devolve into rote learning instead of discovering
values, skills, and concepts through active, direct experience.
Clark, Day, and Greer observed that D B A E accepts a
broad definition of art that includes folk art, applied art, and
non-Western art as well as masterpieces from the Western
archive. This inclusion might commend D B A E as a potential
resource for critical practice in art; however, merely men-
tioning "ethnographic art" hardly produces instant diversity
or critical arts pedagogy. The concepts that tacitly but never-
theless systematically exalt Western art to the exclusion of
the arts of other cultures must first be exposed, and we must
take great care to avoid presenting a hidden hierarchy of art
forms as immutable fact. In traditional art education, studying
African tribal masks can be an exercise in comparing them to
Western art and valuing them according to standards derived
from Western art constructs. Instead, critical practice in the
arts attempts to understand African masks in their own cultur-
al context and value them as a meaningful, powerful symbol
system in that context.

ARTS PROPEL
A R T S P R O P E L is an instructional model developed under the
aegis of the Harvard Graduate School of Education's Project
Zero, the ongoing research group that studies issues relating to
320 Critical Art Pedagogy

the psychology and philosophy of art. Like D B A E , A R T S

P R O P E L continues to undergo on-site evaluation.
As you may recall from our explorations of the new psy-
chologies in the third chapter, Project Zero was begun in the
late 1960s by Nelson Goodman, a philosopher interested in
exploring how art operates as a system of symbols and how it
functions as a way of knowing and thinking on par with other
forms of knowledge (Gardner, 1989). Direction of Project
Zero eventually passed to David Perkins and Howard Gardner,
who originated the Multiple Intelligences theory. Recall also
from the third chapter that Gardner identified seven intel-
ligences: linguistic, logico-mathematical, spatial, musical,
bodily-kinetic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal.
Under Gardner's direction, the Project Zero members
increasingly pursued direct educational applications of their
research and theories of learning and development in the arts.
This involvement culminated in A R T S PROPEL, a systemat-
ic, research-based model of art instruction. A R T S P R O P E L
got underway in the mid-1980s as a collaborative effort
among Project Zero, the Educational Testing Service, the
Pittsburgh Public Schools, and the Rockefeller Foundation. It
sought to develop forms of assessment to document and evalu-
ate artistic learning during the later elementary grades, middle
school and in high school. The project focused on assessing
learning in three art forms, visual arts, music, and creative
writing.
In turn, three specific competencies were categorized in
each art form. The first, production competency, refers to the
activities and processes involved in making visual art objects,
performing or composing music, and writing from the imagina-
tion. The second competency, perception, involves an
engaged decoding of the artistic product—that is to say, dif-
ferentiating its distinguishing features and becoming aware of
its qualities. The third competency, reflection, involves
thinking about one's experience with the artistic product—
that is examining its expressive dimensions, understanding it,
and critically analyzing it.
Gardner fused the production, perception, and reflection
triad into the acronym A R T S PROPEL, an awkward stretch,
but one with optimistic connotations. (Perhaps critical art
Models for Practice 321

pedagogy could recycle venerable educational nomenclature by

designating A R T S P R O P E L as the art trivium and D B A E as
the art quadrivium.) The tripartite structure of A R T S PRO-
P E L persists at the instructional level. Teachers devise learn-
ing activities corresponding to each of the three competencies
are devised. Each learning activity, called a "domain project,"
must include production, perception, and reflection compo-
nents. The progenitors of A R T S P R O P E L do not specify an
entire K through 12 curriculum of domain projects. Instead, in
theory, the A R T S P R O P E L model can fit almost any type of
activity and can be adapted to existing art curricula. Teachers
must evaluate and change, i f necessary, the domain project to
fit their teaching styles, their students' abilities and interests,
the school context, or any other factors teachers identify as
salient (Gardner, 1989).
Although the Project Zero Development Group continues
to develop materials for domain projects, the A R T S P R O P E L
approach places a great reliance on teachers to design and
deliver instruction consistent with the A R T S P R O P E L model.
As yet, no criteria exist by which specific activities can qualify
as A R T S P R O P E L instruction.
Along with competencies and domain projects, a key
feature of A R T S P R O P E L is the assessment of a student's art
portfolio as indicative of learning. Gardner calls this a "pro-
cessfolio" to indicate that unlike an artist's portfolio, which
contains only examples of the artist's best work, the students
processfolio contains formative examples of the student's
learning. Preliminary sketches, plans, ideas, notes, self-crit-
icism, copies of pertinent art by others, as well as finished art
works—they all document the student's learning progress. For
assessment purposes, the student receives evaluations on the
basis of the qualities of the learning process rather than
exclusively on the characteristics of the objects he or she has
made. This assessment takes the following five characteristics
into consideration:

1. features of the student's artistic production, including

formal and stylistic qualities;
322 Critical Art Pedagogy

2. evidence of an ability to conceive of an art project and

the ability to execute steps necessary to carry out plans;

3. evidence of such types of artistic thinking as variation on

a theme;

4. meaningful self-critiques at appropriate intervals; and

5. sensitivity to meaning and expressive aspects in the

student's own art (Gardner, 1989).

Obviously, the processfolio approach to assessment differs

markedly from the standardized test, and these differences
make A R T S PROPEL relatively compatible with critical peda-
gogy. It frees the individual student from becoming sorted and
ranked according to a hierarchy of norms that may favor
certain groups and exclude others. The processfolio unites the
student with his or her art in a participatory way. Art is not
presented as a realm beyond the student's experience.

Implications of ARTS PROPEL for Critical Arts

Pedagogy, School Art Worlds, and Student Art Worlds
Beyond the three competencies, the domain activities, and
assessment, some additional foundation beliefs characterize
the A R T S P R O P E L model. Informing A R T S PROPEL, a series
of postulates, prescriptions, and research findings cohere in
helpful ways with the concerns of a critical arts pedagogy.
The first is the stipulation that artistic production should
be a primary focus in any art learning activity, especially for
younger children. Arts production starts out as a spontaneous,
self-generated activity that occurs naturally and comes to play
a central role at several junctures in a developing child's
contact with self and world. We all know that art production
activities can play instrumental roles in the development of
cognitive, perceptual, and physical abilities. Later on, formal
art instruction extends art learning in schools and apprentice-
ships. This belief that children should be actively involved in
making art is a legacy from John Dewey. Through its
emphasis on active involvement in art production, the A R T S
P R O P E L model fosters a connection between art student and
Models for Practice 323

the art world which is based on active engagement through

immediate experience in the student's own context of mean-
ing rather than through vicarious, desultory gleanings from
remote and reified art objects.
A second postulate of A R T S PROPEL is the conviction
that teachers should avoid presenting specific aesthetic and
critical value judgments as absolute, immutable facts promul-
gated by art experts. Matters of taste should be discussed and
developed intelligently during informed, active discussion.
Students should be actively involved in constructing value
judgments about art, not merely receiving wisdom from the
archive.
A third belief is that formal art instruction should occupy
a valued place in the curriculum and should be carried out by
communicative persons with art knowledge and skills. Accord-
ing to A R T S PROPEL, teachers should refrain from teaching
about art. In other words, they should avoid introducing art
subject matter only through linguistic and logical modalities.
Doing so establishes an inhibiting separation between the
learner and the subject, a gap that discourages critical learning.
Unfortunately, such hackneyed educational offerings as art
appreciation surveys often constitute a student's only contact
with formal instruction in art after elementary school.
Although it sounds obvious, another foundation belief is
that art projects should be meaningful to the students. One
way to promote this ideal is to allow art projects to proceed
and develop over an extended period of time rather than in
single blocks of time that match the academic schedule.
Another way to promote relevance is to respect, protect, and
encourage the student's deeply personal, subjective, and reflec-
tive experiences in art. You can easily bring them into the art
instruction process as integral parts of art production, percep-
tion, and reflection. A third means of promoting relevance is
to welcome their art worlds and the popular culture into the
school culture and the school art world. Even the most
cursory examination of the current popular youth culture
reveals exciting, vibrant, energetic dimensions to be en-
couraged rather than suppressed. It may be that the familiar
downward curve of art learning after the onset of adolescence
occurs only in school.
324 Critical Art Pedagogy

A R T S P R O P E L advocates deeper learning in a few art

mediums rather than superficial exposure to an impossibly
broad and necessarily shallow array of art forms. Deeper
experiences with a finite number of art forms should promote
the much-touted, but little understood ability for "thinking" in
that art form. We take this term to mean using the stylistic
features and the symbol system of the art medium to create
meaning by inviting observers to engage the art object as a
text to be interpreted in experience. Further, advocates of
A R T S P R O P E L consider no single art form superior to
another in its ability to promote artistic thinking. Nor do
knowledge and skills in one art form necessarily transfer to
others.
For critical art pedagogy, an instructional model functions
best as a resource rather than a rule book. No license is needed
to enact critical arts pedagogy, no more so than for applying
the concepts and methods of deconstruction to reveal tacit
sources of oppression in binary oppositions and to create a
liberating critical consciousness. By now, artists, art teachers
and students interested in critical art pedagogy recognize that
they need uphold no single instructional model in enacting the
arts as critical praxis at particular times, in particular places
and with particular individuals. Furthermore, we recognize that
critical art pedagogy can enliven a number of approaches to
art education through its continuing discourse on the possibili-
ties of liberation.
Chapter Seven

Disconnecting from Modernism,

Connecting to Postmodernism

One of the tenets of critical arts pedagogy is that its partici-

pants embrace the contemporary art world. This entails
recognizing, exploring, and coming to terms with postmodern-
ism, both as a broad-based cultural paradigm and as a stylistic
movement in art. It also entails understanding modernism's
premises and how its limitations helped create and sustain the
separation of art instruction in the schools from the art world.
This separation, of course, is a signature characteristic of
traditional art education, and one that critical art pedagogy
marks for radical change. Hilton Kramer, editor of The New
Criterion, a periodical dedicated to reviewing the arts and
defending the status of high art against New Left and post-
modernist literary and art criticism, was regarded for many
years as the high priest of conservative modernist criticism.
Even Kramer (1982) finally acknowledged in his essay,
"Postmodern: Art and Culture in the 1980s," that modernism
has lost its place as the currency of our culture to the emerg-
ing postmodern paradigm. This chapter explores in broad
terms the development, characteristics, and concepts of this
new postmodernism paradigm and its implications for critical
art pedagogy. Jean-Francois Lyotard, the French cultural
philosopher, wrote in his 1984 book, The Postmodern
Condition: A Report of Knowledge, that the task for post-
modern artists is less to provide a representation of reality or
even reality itself than to invent metaphors for reality so as
to open otherwise inaccessible and inexpressible domains of
human experience.
326 Critical Art Pedagogy

Cultural Paradigms
Artist-teachers understand how broad-based cultural move-
ments relate to art. They believe—and try to teach their stu-
dents—that the art process operates within the context of a
cultural paradigm rather than in a vacuum. It shapes and is
shaped by broadly accepted cultural and social values. Art
visualizes, translates, theorizes, forms meanings, uncovers,
confronts, and challenges all in order to make art objects or
events that somehow "belong to" a given cultural or intel-
lectual mode. This is not to say that art always operates along
a neat dialectic or is always logically integrated into one under-
standing, one voice and one grand narrative. Rather, critical
art pedagogy holds that art and art education operate within a
socially grounded context. They are, in fact, constructed in a
social context rich with interactions, complexities, influences,
causes, effects, possibilities, and impossibilities, like most
other human enterprises. Postmodern art and art pedagogy are
parts of a socio-cultural "ecology" in which the dominant
theme is connectedness. Critical art pedagogy also considers it
better for artist-teachers to be explicitly committed to con-
nectedness than to invest by default in the modernist myths
of the independent and self-referential art object and its
legacy, a socio-culturally detached art world isolated from
history and human transaction.
The histories of art, music and literature are, to an extent,
the histories of cultural paradigms. Art and cultural paradigms
continually interact and continually change one another.
Further, history can shape cultural-intellectual movements.
Typically, we discern, understand, intellectually chronicle, and
label each ism long after the actual occurrence of the phe-
nomena that manifest the values and meanings of particular
cultural paradigm. Moreover, cultural-intellectual movements
operate like philosophical or scientific paradigms. According
to Thomas Kuhn (1962), paradigms change in ragged, disorder-
ly ways, far from the neat, logical dialectical syntheses the
traditional historiographical perspective, with its modernist-
positivist distortions, suggests. Further, paradigms are neither
monolithic nor homogeneous with respect to time and place.
We know from the history of art, for example, that the Late
Connecting to Postmodernism 327

Renaissance and Baroque art styles coexisted in Western

Europe at about the same time and often in the same places.
In short, paradigms are "fuzzy sets," not party lines for
artists and art educators to parrot. Cultural paradigms are
family-resemblance categories rather than strictly defined sets
o f properties. Nevertheless, paradigms tacitly organize methods
and concepts for producing truth and value claims in art. They
bestow legitimacy upon particular art works according to the
extent to which it appears to conform to the methods and
concepts characteristic of a particular genus. As Kuhn observ-
ed, the practitioners camped within its borders consider the
products of a paradigm to be "normal" or "true" or "common
sense" or "self evident."
Artists in the nineteenth century spoke with many voices,
but their tones had consistencies. Romanticism, the dominant
cultural-intellectual paradigm of the nineteenth century, was
itself a reaction against the dominant cultural-intellectual
movement of the eighteenth century, Neoclassicism. The
defining characteristic of Romanticism is the belief that the
essence of human nature resides in the emotions, spirit, imagi-
nation and inner depths of the human psyche. This presaged
the convergent nineteenth century developments of Freudian
psychoanalytic theory and Romantic poetry. Freud concluded
that internal emotions determined behavior. William Words-
worth (1770-1850) once defined poetry as the spontaneous
welling up and overflow of powerful emotions, and his friend
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) wrote that the greatest
effect of poetry occurs when the imagination substitutes a
"sublime feeling of the unimaginable" for a real experience
(Perkins, 1967).
We can trace the term "Romanticism" to 1798 when the
German art and literary critics Friedrich and August V o n
Schlegel used it to distinguish Medieval and Renaissance art
and literature from that of Classical Greece and Rome. In draw-
ing this distinction, the Von Schlegels argued that the art and
literature that came after the classical era was legitimate and
valuable even though the prevailing Neoclassical opinions of
the their day regarded the art and culture of ancient Greece
and Rome to be the high point of civilization. A l l that came
afterwards, including the Renaissance, mapped a trajectory
328 Critical Art Pedagogy

toward decay in its failure to meet the cultural standards the

ancients had established.
In short, the Von Schlegel brothers sought to establish a
new cultural ideal and to re-evaluate the "decadent" postclas-
sical art and literature according to new cultural terms that
would replace the critical standards based on the assumptions,
values and postulates of the older Neoclassical cultural para-
digm. One of these Neoclassical postulates was that value in
art rested exclusively on rules of form. For example, the
familiar classical orders—the Doric, Ionic and Corinthian—
followed strictly specified sets of rules governing art and
architecture that had been generated to complement the
religious beliefs and practices of the classical Greek cultures.
The new Romantic ideal rejected these limitations. Instead,
Romantic art, like life itself, pursued infinite variety. Ro-
mantic artists considered themselves free to explore new sub-
ject matter and form instead of replicating the aesthetic and
critical standards of an earlier era.
David Perkins (1967), a scholar of the Romantic era,
noted that the Von Schlegels intended their neologism ("like
the Romans") to refer to artists of the Middle Ages and the
Renaissance, not necessarily their eighteenth and nineteenth
century contemporaries. But the term came to define loosely
the diverse cultural, artistic and literary phenomena of the
nineteenth century.
According to Romanticism, the artistic impulse was a
creative, emotional, intuitive force originating "within" the
artist, who must, in turn, strive to manifest it externally
through art. Thus, individual artistic freedom became the ulti-
mate Romantic value.
Modernism, the cultural paradigm that succeeded Romanti-
cism, defined the essence of human nature as the ability to
reason, and social psychologist Kenneth Gergen (1991)
isolated the scientific method as Modernism's principal theme
or metaphor. With its emphasis on rigorous, detached obser-
vation and reason, science became the predominant means for
attaining worthwhile knowledge. Pushed to the extreme and
then inverted, this tenet came to mean that knowledge with-
out a scientific basis is worthless.
Connecting to Postmodernism 329

During the first third of the twentieth century, the school

of philosophy called "Logical Positivism" emerged to articu-
late the Modernism's intellectual agenda. In Vienna, a group
of philosophers appropriately referred to as "The Vienna
Circle" and including Rudolph Carnap and Moritz Schlick,
formed a study group to advance the ideas of logical
positivism. Logical positivists like A.J. Ayer regarded meta-
physics as wrong turns on the path to knowledge, and Ayer
enunciated the precepts of logical positivism in his 1936
book, Language, truth, and logic. Ayer regarded certain ques-
tions as improper because they could not be empirically
verified. Accordingly, he subordinated the domains of philo-
sophy, art, history, literature, and theology—all of them
predominantly speculative or hermeneutic—to the "cer-
tainties" of scientific knowledge. He considered intuited under-
standing and knowledge based on tradition to be meaningless
and therefore, deserving of marginalization. Any statement
unsusceptible to verification—which is to say, unable to be
proved true or false empirically—was without meaning
(Honderich, 1995).
As you may recall, the Modernist paradigm's primary
epistemological assumption is naive realism, the belief that
truth has an objective existence and can be known by obser-
vation in the physical world as it appears to the senses.
Through observation, one can supply one's reason with data
to process into knowledge. In such a process, sensory modes
became mere conveyors of data, mere input devices serving
the faculty of reason where the real work of knowing pro-
ceeds. To the Modernist, the idea of unknowable reality is non-
sense. Magic, the soul, the spirit, and many aspects salient to
art stand in stark contrast to Modernism' totalitarian, one-
dimensional epistemologv.

Questioning Modernism in Art

For the visual arts, Modernism's belief in the independence of
the art object became its defining characteristic. By the end of
the nineteenth century, art concerned itself less and less with
mimetically representing nature. Its aim shifted away from
pictorial illusionism. A painting no longer provided a window
on the world. Such artistic conventions as precise contour
330 Critical Art Pedagogy

lines, linear perspective, chiaroscuro, and so forth, developed

for representing three-dimensional objects in two dimensions,
no longer found as much use under the influences of the
Modernist cultural paradigm. If the art object was to be inde-
pendent, it required no validation according to how closely it
resembled the "out there" world.
For Manet and Cezanne, art created its own reality. The
physical properties of the art object itself became the
compelling interest. The art object became decontextualized.
Its value was intrinsic, independent of the world. Impres-
sionists interested themselves mainly in the effects of light
and the surfaces of their paintings.
In his book, The Saturated Self, Kenneth Gergen (1991)
supplied another guiding metaphor to understand Modernism:
the machine. The nineteenth century industrial revolution's
wave had crested and had begun to ebb by the advent of the
modern era, leaving behind both a deeply ingrained reliance on
the machine and the tendency to exalt it. After all, the ma-
chine was the both the result and the tool of science.
Machines were "rational."
Art and literature have made abundant use of this meta-
phor. The Bauhaus epitomized the linkage between art, the art
education establishment, and industrialization, its very aim
being to produce artist-designers who could exploit the design
style that industrial processes and the machine metaphor
suggested. Modernist architecture, as well, reflected the ma-
chine aesthetic. Le Corbusier (Charles Edouard Jeanneret) in
his 1931 book, Towards a New Architecture, referred to the
house as a machine a habiter ("a machine to live in").
The machine aesthetic aptly expresses the prime
Modernist value of independence. Many of our modern ma-
chines operate in the absence of human attendance: tele-
phones, water heaters, refrigerators, fax machines, and many
more, seem to run entirely on their own like Hal, the soulless
in Stanley Kubrick's film, 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The machine imagery extends to modernist conceptions
of personality and intelligence. Behaviorism, the stolidly
Modernist psychological perspective, conceptualizes such con-
structs as the personality, learning, and intelligence as control-
led, operated, shaped—or, i f you will, "manufactured"—by the
Connecting to Postmodernism 331

environment. As circumscribed by behaviorism, the personali-

ty exists only as observable behavior consisting of responses
to stimuli reveal it. Stimuli are buttons and levers that control
reactions.
Another aspect of the machine analogy is that human
characteristics like personality and learning are coherent and
consistent—that is to say, they operate rationally and display
a more or less fixed set of traits that characterize the individu-
al over time. This assumption, fundamental to standardized
testing and associated practices like ability tracking in the
schools, guided the Tylerian approach to education that con-
ceived of learning in terms of movement along a fixed linear
sequence marked by specified and observable educational out-
comes.
One of Modernism's cherished myths is the idea of pro-
gress in art. Modernists accepted the presence of a Euclidean-
like fixed point "out there" toward which art and artists in-
exorably move. Moreover, this point corresponds to a set of
conditions categorically better than those of the past and
present. Modernist art historiography presumes that art pro-
ceeds ever more efficiently toward some fixed, ideal, ultimate,
best end art (Danto, 1997). One can find many parallels
between the modernist and positivist cultural paradigms; they
are contemporaneous denominations of the same cultural cur-
rency.
Artists, art educators, students and others who anticipate
the possibilities of critical art pedagogy experience the "felt
need," the presaged vague outlines of the problems of
Modernist art instruction that will come into focus as they
create a critical art pedagogy in the schools of the post-
modern era. Other forms of knowledge, notably science and
philosophy, may join these voices to challenge the myopic
but pervasive socio-cultural influences of Modernism.
As we saw earlier, one of the philosophical foundations of
Modernism, naive realism, posits a reality existing inde-
pendent of our perceptions of the physical world. Sometimes
advocates of postmodern sensibilities refer semi-facetiously to
this external reality as "out there," a phrase by now familiar.
The roots of realism run back to the philosophy of Rene
Descartes (1596-1650), who postulated an eternal schism
332 Critical Art Pedagogy

between mind and body, a binary opposition that led to the di-
chotomy between the subjective and the objective realms that
persists today.
The realist mind-set embraces the idea of continuity. The
logic of objectivity requires that tangible, perceptible objects
occupy fixed points in time and space and operate according
to principles logic and science can reveal. The objective realm
remains stable in the sense that, assuming their normality,
different persons will experience the characteristics of objects
in essentially the same ways. Everyone, for example, per-
ceives a ripe Winesap apple red.
But certain problems attend the epistemology of Modern-
ism. Ironically, science and the culture of positivism, pillars of
the Modernist paradigm, also tease out Modernism's fraying
edges. From physics, the Heisenberg Uncertainly Principle pro-
vides disconcerting evidence that objects long assumed
(logically) to have tangible, immutable, physical objective exist-
ence may actually be changed by being observed or measured.
Werner Heisenberg (1958), a German physicist, observed that
some subatomic particles change their behavior in response to
being measured so that they occupy different places at the
same instant. This observation contradicts the objective con-
tinuity principle so essential to realist and science-based
thought systems. Heisenberg's findings suggest that physical
objects react differently to different forms of measurement.
We can also take his observation to mean that characteristics
of an entity can depend on perspective—that is, how and
where we observe it (Honderich, 1997). Interestingly enough,
physics produced a finding artists and art teachers have long
known: the color of the Winesap apple actually depends on
the color balance of the light that illuminates it. Try looking
at an apple under a sodium vapor street light and then under
the tungsten illumination of, say, the lamp inside a refrigera-
tor. Red is not always red.
In 1962, Thomas Kuhn's book, The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions, further questioned Modernism's glorification of
objective knowledge by carefully tracing scientific change.
Seminal changes in science, Kuhn observed, occur not in
smoothly functioning, dispassionate, rational, neatly dialec-
tical steps. Instead, scientific knowledge changes come by
Connecting to Postmodernism 333
ragged jerks he called "paradigm shifts." A scientific paradigm
is a small-scale equivalent to such broad-based cultural move-
ments as Romanticism or Neoclassicism discussed earlier. It is
a general set of more or less consistent and often implicit
assumptions that constitute a perspective, style, or way to
recognize data and make knowledge. It amounts to a predis-
position to interpret observations about the world in certain
ways. For example, educators who believe in intelligence as a
single, unified trait share the same paradigm and they develop
strategies of instruction and forms of authorized knowledge
that reflect their belief. A paradigm shift occurs when enough
contradictory evidence accumulates among a sizable number
of scholars or practitioners to oust one belief and install
another. The challenge Howard Gardner's (1983) theory of
multiple intelligences posses to the construct of intelligence as
a general, unified, innate capacity to learn exemplifies a para-
digm shift currently underway in education and psychology.
As paradigms change, some cling like shipwreck survivors
to the old paradigm and its truth criteria. Some in the avant
garde rush ahead to subvert the old paradigm and embrace the
uncertainty of the new. Kuhn never spoke of absolute
scientific proof. Instead, he saw "true scientific facts" as
observations believers in a particular paradigm consider
sensible—that is, consistent with the paradigm's assumptions
and its criteria for truth. Scientific observations depend on
particular perspectives or predispositions, like Heisenberg's
findings and the discovery that an object's color changes
according on the nature of its illumination. Scientists who
measure phenomena quantitatively stay within the quanti-
tative paradigm. Scholars who make interpretations based on
lived experiences as expressed by their subjects subscribe to
the qualitative paradigm.

Subverting Modernism
As we examine how cultural paradigms influence art and how
we teach art, the realization emerges that, as a human phe-
nomenon, art is linked in important ways to other human
phenomena. Thus, we also see that the doctrine of the in-
dependent, self-validating art object assumes a deathly pallor.
It seems counterintuitive, no longer palpably obvious, that art
334 Critical Art Pedagogy

is self-validating and beyond contextual determination. In-

stead, like other human phenomena, art both creates and is
created by the entirety of the culture. In the caves of
Altamira and Lascaux, art, shamanist ritual, food gathering
and hunting, and other aspects of tribal life were brought
together in a complex, symbiotically interrelated system made
visible on cave walls. Like ritual, hunting and eating, art was
an interwoven strand of communal life.
With its celebration of philosophical realism and the
scientific method as sources of truth, Modernism has had an
enormous influence on art and art education. Modernism in art
had two central tenets. First, art objects must be autotelic—
they must stand alone. A n artwork should not depend on
external validation, but only on itself for authenticity. For
instance, art should not be required to conform to strictures
concerning usefulness, tradition, technical processes, pre-
scribed or proscribed content, ideology, moral stipulations, or
artistic intent. These autonomous entities strike their own
terms for legitimacy. Art objects exist "out there" on their
own.
Its second tenet held that aesthetic value and aesthetic
experience should be objectively verifiable and subject to the
logic of cause and effect. They should be related to the art
object in knowable ways. The reliance on and implicit glorifica-
tion of logical and scientific forms of knowledge is unmistak-
able here. If the art object is objectively independent, the
critical and aesthetic judgments about it can be value-free and
verifiable, just like scientific facts. It follows that critics and
viewers of art should also be objective and free from bias or
ideological commitment. Critical and aesthetic statements, i f
they are to be valid under Modernist presumptions, should be
confined to descriptions of a work's formal elements: line,
shape or form, texture, value and color. Modernist art dissoci-
ates itself from the social world where such supposedly
irrelevant aspects as political, ethical, mystical, or economic
ramifications interact to influence art's value and significance.
From the critical perspective, these Modernist tenets have
had the unfortunate consequence of establishing and perpetu-
ating the very conditions under which art and art education
become marginalized in society and its schools. The separa-
Connecting to Postmodernism 335

tion of the art object from the web of contexts in which it is

produced and experienced amounts to the installation of
meaninglessness as a criterion for its success. Denial is
ordained as accomplishment. We should therefore regard the
confinement of art instruction to the margins of the cur-
riculum as neither a surprise nor an accident. It is perfectly
consistent with Modernism's concept of art; art and artists are
essentially anti-social.
The doctrine of the pure, independent art object that
relies only on itself for validation means that art must exist
outside the mainstream. To fulfill its role as part of the larger
institution of schooling, art education has had to remain aloof
from the Modernist art world, glimpsing its visage from a safe
distance, but paying tribute by training suppressed students to
replicate its archive. Art education's great dilemma in the
Modernist era has been how to invite participation in educa-
tion's mission of acculturating future generations while main-
taining the semblance of allegiance to Modernist art principles
that work against its own mission. The art education establish-
ment has been able to accomplish neither very well, and it has
created a school art world that tends to offer an insipid, but
safe, authorized version of high art, thereby maintaining
separation from the contemporary art world. In doing so,
mainstream art education (it is really a contradiction in terms)
has impaled itself on both horns of its dilemma by adopting
Modernist principles that relegate it to the margins of both
the world of art and the world of education. It has, in effect,
defined itself as a marginal member of the educational estab-
lishment and as a an awkwardly embarrassing distant cousin of
the contemporary art world. The recent attempts to raise art
education into the ranks of mainstream disciplines fail to urge
that art education embrace the art world of its time and cast
off its implicit and explicit Modernist constraints. Moreover,
remember that art, as dangerous knowledge, can be powerful
and destabilizing and that art linked to the contemporary art
world may be viewed by those clinging to the Modernist
paradigm as a security risk. No wonder, then, that art remains
a minor player in the curriculum.
The price of this self-inflicted insularity has been the
absence of art and art education from the discourses of social
336 Critical Art Pedagogy

and political reality. Nor has simple isolation been the only
consequence. Modernism developed its credo of the autono-
mous art object into the doctrine of "art for art's sake." and
in so doing, denied the legitimate art object a utilitarian func-
tion, then excluded objects with utilitarian functions from art.
Modern art might well possess intellectual, political, econom-
ic, social, philosophical, even domestic decorative functions,
but these qualities exist outside the aesthetic experience of the
art object. Only art's formal elements elicit aesthetic experi-
ence according to Modernism.
In fact, from the Modernist perspective, utilitarian func-
tions may be so distracting as to prevent aesthetic experience.
The rationale for art must, then, admit of only the goal of the
experience of art itself. This doctrine implicitly denies legiti-
macy to the rich world of craft—ceramics, glass, woodwork-
ing, weaving, jewelry, and so on. Likewise, women's art, much
of the art produced by ethnic minorities and racial groups, and
the so-called "naive," "outsider" art and folk arts are exclud-
ed. Modernism's disdain for these art forms has changed how
their practitioners produce them. Seeking inclusion in the se-
lective and remunerative art world, they adopt such Modernist
forms of expression, stylistic elements, and conventions as
abstraction and expressionism, leaving behind their traditions,
contexts, and connections with contemporary life.
Modernism never conceived of art as a socially situated
practice, but rather as an individual expression of the artist's
unique inner force—the terribilita, creativity, inspiration, and
so forth. Only the few possessed of such rare qualities can
achieve "real" art. So why teach it at all in the public schools
and colleges?
The Modernist insistence on an aesthetic purity untainted
by utilitarian function enfeebles art as an expression of the
very cultural paradigm that produced it. Thus, the Modernist
impulse fails to address today's concerns about bringing multi-
ple voices and diverse experiences into the discourses on educa-
tion in general and art education in particular. Critical art
pedagogy, in fact, sees little potential in an art or art edu-
cation divorced from the social, political, ideological dis-
courses of the contemporary art world. Critical theory invests
its efforts in promoting social justice, and its legacy, critical
Connecting to Postmodernism 337

art pedagogy, can neither celebrate nor participate in dis-

interested art making.

Connecting Critical Art Pedagogy to Postmodernism

To visualize and enact a critical arts pedagogy, we must recog-
nize the value of relating art education as practiced in today's
schools to the art world as it exists and thrives in today's post-
modern culture. A critical arts pedagogy seeks engagement
with both past and present art worlds. But this engagement
entails confronting art in the active context of the socio-
cultural paradigm that nourishes our awareness of art's
significance rather than in an isolation contrived for safe
school consumption. Engaging art in the schools with the
contemporary art world means an active and conscious associa-
tion with postmodernism.
A description of postmodernism, or any previous cultural
paradigm, should proceed with a warning that cultural para-
digms are far from neatly bound, homogenous absolutes and
that their defining characteristics are more like family resem-
blances than necessary-and-sufficient criteria. Postmodernism
conceives of reality and knowledge as socially constructed.
People actively create meaning through interactions in the
social sphere. This conception naturally challenges the
Modernist-positivist objectivity, the credo of separation be-
tween the knower and the known, and the insistence on value-
neutral judgments and absolutist knowledge.
Postmodernism invites many voices into this social
construction of knowledge, reality, and value. It values
diversity for its tendency to broaden and deepen the construc-
tion process. Multiple sources of truth and knowledge con-
struct constellations of meaning instead of a single, unified
version to be adopted as truth to the exclusion of competing
observations.
To the postmodern mind, knowing is not an act of discern-
ing a core essence or assimilating a set of necessary, ideal
forms. Granting legitimacy to multiple versions of reality and
the many voices of truth—and in our case, many visions of
art and artistic value—defies established authority, subverts
the hierarchy of the archive and diminishes its powerful influ-
ence on our art worlds. It undermines tradition and redefines
338 Critical Art Pedagogy

the terms for rationality, logic, and "common sense" former-

ly constructed under the terms of the Modernist-positivist
paradigm.
As a resource for critical art pedagogy, the postmodern
theory of knowledge recognizes the relationship between pow-
er and knowledge and, for our purposes here, between power
and artistic value. Earlier cultural paradigms, Romanticism and
Modernism, failed to emphasize, let alone acknowledge, these
relationships. Every field—art, literature, even science, with
its reputation for objective truth-seeking methods, is vulner-
able to the often tacit intrusions of those power interests that
would shape it. In other words, every subject area, every
division of human knowledge, contains implicit codes that can
serve the interests of the powerful at the expense of others.
Michel Foucault (1970, 1972) identified two epistemolo-
gical misconceptions that have produced pervasive distortions
not only in philosophy and other academic areas, but also in
the ways humans act, perceive, and conceptualize their experi-
ence. One misconception is that knowledge is objective and
will be conclusively discovered in the due course of human
intellectual endeavor. A second misconception is that
knowledge is both value-free and independent of power.
Foucault's succinct statements critique of Modernist and
Enlightenment epistemological assumptions. Reversed, these
assumptions are declarations of the epistemological principles
of postmodernism: (1) knowledge is inherently subjective and
socially constructed and (2) knowledge is value-laden and
shaped by power interests. As such, these tenets are more than
just applicable to art and art education, they strengthen the
foundations of critical art pedagogy.

A Sampling of Postmodern Art and Artists

In the art world, two overarching characteristics of post-
modernism are its determined repudiation of Modernist cultur-
al and artistic values as ideals and its deliberate refusal to in-
stall alternative ideals to replace exhausted Modernist forms
(Janson, 1995). Manifestations of postmodernism in the art
world sometimes lack logic and coherence—and often inten-
tionally so. Postmodernist art has not been deduced from first
principles nor does it systematically follow from higher,
Connecting to Postmodernism 339

universal principles. Instead, postmodern art traverses richly

pluralistic terrains in which no one style (or aesthetic ap-
proach or material or technique, for that matter) eclipses any
other. According to postmodernism, the world presents texts
with multiple interpretations both possible and preferable.
Moreover, postmodern art attracts a wide array of descrip-
tions. Although parallels and consistencies occasionally appear,
one should avoid regarding the following descriptive tenets as a
definitive set. The art world continues to enact postmodernism.
To start with, postmodern art reveals an abiding impulse
to challenge power and authority in all forms. In particular, it
contests exclusionary versions of reality and truth claims
presented as final and ultimate. Truth with a capitol T is unten-
able. In "postmodernspeak," a presumption of speaking from
the position of ultimate truth earns the ironic epithet "grand
narrative." Further, truth and power and knowledge are thor-
oughly interwoven rather than independent objective entities.
A suspicion of authority often enters postmodern art and liter-
ary criticism, and it tends to manifest itself as calls to reject
the binary oppositions—the dichotomies between— Author-
reader, Artist-viewer, Teacher-student, Text's Meaning-read-
er's interpretation, and Expert-teacher. Postmodern scholars
sometimes refer to the Modernist-positivist tendency to think
in bipolar, hierarchical terms as the politics, or the "aesthetics
of difference." For example, the aesthetics of difference has
led to the presumption that Western art is inherently superior
to the art of distant cultures and unfamiliar ethnic groups.
Postmodernism is skeptical of the claims and assumptions
that scientific knowledge, logic, and reason surpass all other
forms of knowledge, especially intuition, art and aesthetic
knowing, fantasy, and mysticism. Reflecting the influence of
such post-positivist philosophies as critical theory, postmod-
ernism views the privileged forms of knowing as sources of op-
pression to be subverted in the struggle against social injustice.
Postmodernism remains open to mystifying, and even incon-
sistent ways of knowing and valuing to accomplish this end.
Other characteristics of postmodern art include the aban-
donment of formalist issues and mimesis-based rules governing
artistic production and artistic value. In Janson's (1995)
formulation, postmodernism holds that through Modernism's
340 Critical Art Pedagogy

influence, the art world became a tool for large-scale cor-

porate capitalism. Postmodernism, however, authorizes no
new rules. Artists and writers are free to play and wordplay,
parody, pastiche appear frequently in postmodern art and
literature. The use of non-traditional, occasionally surprising
materials in the production of art is another characteristic,
along with a wild appropriations from previous art styles and
well-known art objects from the archive and from such non-
art sources as mass communication and printed materials.
Postmodern artists freely commandeer elements of old art and
non-art to configure new possibilities.
Postmodern thought relocates aesthetic value from the
formal, stylistic, and iconic properties of the particular art
object to the viewer's experience of the art object. This tran-
saction constructs aesthetic value. The encounter of art and
its definition and experience as art by a particular individual
constitutes the locus of aesthetic value.
Postmodern architecture rests on a critique of the ten-
dencies of the modern and international styles of architecture
to search for universal architectural ideals. Postmodern archi-
tecture believes this search to be futile. Postmodern architec-
ture reinserts the human scale and such qualities as surprise and
whimsy. The architectural firms of Sites Projects, Inc., and
Maple-Jones Associates collaborated to design a showroom for
Best Stores in Houston in 1975, and they produced a radical
parody of commercial architecture's banality. The Best Stores
Showroom is basically a huge, windowless, off-white, brick box
in an asphalt parking lot on the Texas flatland. The most ob-
vious detail is the facade's surprising roof line, which re-
sembles a partially destroyed ruin or a bombed-out building in
a war zone. The jagged roof line of raw, jutting, uneven, un-
finished bricks tumbles irregularly from the highest corner at
the left facade to both adjacent corners like a plunging line on
an E K G graphing a patient's abrupt decline or the bad news
business report that may have caused the heart attack to begin
with. Above the building's main entrance starting at the top
of the front wall contiguous with the jagged roof line, one sees
a stunning, wound-like, V-shaped breach from which an irregu-
lar mound of bricks has accumulated on the top of the porch
roof. The bricks appear to have been poured from within, a
Connecting to Postmodernism 341

positive space that forms an inverse of the negative space of

the V-shaped breach. This element suggests that the explosion
came from within the building itself. Was the cause simply the
passage of time or a cataclysm, natural or unnatural, deserved
or undeserved? Does it symbolize the demise of modernist-
inspired, box-like commercial architecture, or perhaps the
collapse of modernism itself? Is the Best Stores Showroom a
ruin? or a monumental practical joke? or a definitive postmod-
ern architectural statement? It is all three, and perhaps more.
Installations, an increasingly popular genre of postmodern
sculpture, are, of course, art environments as opposed to art
objects: three-dimensional areas or scenes constructed in gal-
leries, museums, or almost anywhere. They are usually tem-
porary. For example, Ilya Kabakov constructed The Man Who
Flew into Space from his Apartment at the Ronald Feldman
Gallery in New York in 1988. Somewhat reminiscent of the
Best Stores Showroom, the installation's conceit is that a man
has been catapulted through the ceiling into space, leaving
behind his shoes, bed, and an eclectic collection of posters and
other art on the walls. Debris, detritus, and other elements of
a general mess from the explosive egress are arrayed hap-
hazardly throughout the installation. The means of expulsion,
a catapult of springs, leather harnesses and ropes hangs limply
from the edges of the gaping, jagged-edged hole in the ceiling.
The strangely low-tech catapult is oddly incongruent with
twentieth century Space Age technology, whether conceived
in science fiction or by N A S A . The installation describes a
fantasy, the three-dimensional story of a dream that came
true and the banality that ensued.
But Kabokov's work is a text that began as a private ex-
perience, and no single meaning or testimony is apparent. A
viewer must interpret the text. It is, however, an amusing coin-
cidence that in the early decades of the twentieth century,
Kabokov's fellow Russian, Suprematist artist Kasimir Male-
vich (1878-1935) once declared himself "President of Space"
(Gablik, 1984). Malevich's Black Quadrilateral, (ca. 1913)
and his Suprematist Composition: White on White (1918)
stand as ultimate Modernist abstractions. Both are simple rec-
tangles (or approximately so) on neutral backgrounds. Elegant
abstractions or supreme banality?
342 Critical Art Pedagogy

The ubiquitous postmodern strategy of appropriation

appears most radically in the grand art medium of painting.
Mark Tansey's Derrida Queries DeMan features a depiction
of an encounter between Jacques Derrida, the French decon-
structionist philosopher, and Paul DeMan, the postmodern
literary critic who applied and popularized many of Derrida's
ideas in the U.S. Tansey's work emphasizes the role of decon-
struction as a principal foundation of both postmodern
epistemology and its fledgling, critical art pedagogy. Tansey
borrowed—copied, actually—his image from a commercial
illustration of a desperate fight between Sherlock Holmes and
his nemesis, the nefarious Dr. Moriarty. The two struggle at
the misty edge of a dangerous precipice. Either or both could
plunge to their deaths in the abyss between two rocky cliffs.
(In Conan Doyle's story, his hero, Sherlock Holmes dies. But
the author resurrected Holmes in response to popular demand.)
Another curious postmodern device appears in Tansey's
painting. The rock faces of the two cliffs are covered with
script, actual quotations from writings on the subject of decon-
struction. One takes Tansey's point to be the questioning of
relationships between the image and the word, between the
illustration and the idea, between the printed word as a visual
symbol and the printed picture as a visual symbol. Which is
the higher form of reality? Is the print part of Tansey's
image or is the image completed somehow by the print? Are
the ideas referenced by the print the meaning of the artwork?
True to the postmodern mind-set, Tansey furnishes only the
mystery, not the (re)solution.
Another postmodern artist known for juxtaposing print
and pictorial images, the photographer Barbara Kruger typical-
ly exhibits large-scale photographic images to which she adds
terse messages or slogans in stark block print. Her messages
tend to be stridently confrontational, ideological, ambiguous,
or sarcastic commentaries on social issues, especially gender
bias and feminist concerns. Kruger represents the strand of
postmodern art that is most closely associated with critical
theory and critical art pedagogy's interests in social criticism,
social justice, compassion, and protest. She frequently uses
stereotypical images from the mass media to address the issue
of how gender-specific knowledge and meaning are reproduced
Connecting to Postmodernism 343

in society. One of her works features the message "I Shop,

Therefore I A m , " an ironic corruption of the Cartesian
duality used sarcastically to underscore one way the popular
and consumer cultures stereotype women. Another of her
works warns, "Don't Buy Me With Apologies."
Cindy Sherman also works with photographic images in
postmodern ways. She stages scenes reminiscent of old Holly-
wood movie stills originally used for advertizing. She usually
assumes the role of a central character in the scene, suggesting
the concept of the self or identity as an invented reality and
contesting the presumption that the self and personality are
stable, innate, continuous entities in human beings. Her work
also raises such feminist issues as how film and mass media con-
struct stereotyped roles for women. For example, typical,
traditional Hollywood fare portrays women as weak damsels in
distress awaiting a strong male rescuer. Like other postmodern
artists, Sherman poses questions but supplies no answers.
Scholar Suzi Gablik (1991) identified a significant strand of
postmodern art, the project of rebuilding or reawakening art's
transformational power at both the societal and individual
levels. In The Reenchantment of Art, she argued that the art
world of Modernism, capitalism and positivism is moribund,
arid and alienated from human experience. The search for re-
enchantment, she suggested, begins with reinvesting art with
ritual and assigning to it the function of creating a cohesive
community through participation in a shared sense of
meaning, value and mystery. She concluded that art can
retrain us as dreamers and conscious mythologizers.
One can detect an optimistic strand of postmodernism in
Gablik's work. One of her themes is that postmodern art can
assume a role in healing. She called this function "recon-
structive postmodernism," as opposed to postmodernism's
deconstructionist element, which prompts a more pessimistic
view evident from its reliance on fatalist rhetoric. A s an
example of reconstructive postmodernist art, and particularly
its emphasis on ritual, Gablik cited the performance art of
Chicago artist Fern Shaffer. On the winter solstice, December
22, the weather is nearly always bitterly cold in Chicago. But
on that day, Shaffer performs a ritual cleansing of crystals on
the shore of Lake Michigan. She has, of course, invented this
344 Critical Art Pedagogy

ritual, in which she dances in a free form manner at dawn

among the organic shapes of ice formations that have
accumulated at the waters edge. Shaffer dresses in a magic
costume invented for the ritual. It is covered by many strands
of raffia, rather like dreadlocks. She ascribes no particular
meaning to her rituals other than that of creating an aware-
ness of the possibilities of a visionary mode of thinking. She
intends to create an experience of magic, myth and ritual that
resists the traditional limitations of rationality.
The subtext of healing appears subtly in the work of
German artist Joseph Beuys (1921-1986) along with the
typical postmodern characteristic of using nontraditional art
materials. Janson (1995) called Beuys "the first postmodern
artist." In World War II, his plane was shot down over the
Crimea during the cold winter of 1943. He survived the crash
only to face death by freezing. He was found nearly dead by
Tartars, who wrapped his body in sheep fat and felt to bring
his temperature back to normal. Later, as an artist, Beuys pro-
duced sculptures made of these two materials. He explained
that he wanted to avoid furthering art's preoccupation with
traditional aesthetics based on beauty and optical realism.
Instead, he wanted to produce a form of aesthetic experience
and value that coalesced only when substances became trans-
formed (Gablik, 1984). We can take Beuys' idea to mean that
the value and nature of a substance is redefined through its
embodiment as art.
The environmental art of Andy Goldsworthy further
illustrates the healing theme of reconstructive postmodern-
ism. Goldsworthy's work is partly sculptural, partly perform-
ance, partly installation. He works in natural settings like
fields, rocky mountainsides, forests, even the North Pole. He
fashions an artwork from whatever materials he finds on the
site: leaves, flowers, rocks, grass, ice. He seldom uses tools or
implements of any kind. His intriguing arches of sticks, woven
strands of leaves or grass or flowers eventually blow away, and
photographs remain the only record of his art. Goldsworthy's
art remains part of the landscape in which it was made, its
very impermanence contributing to the creation of its abiding
value. The artist returns his authority to nature along with the
art objects he creates.
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Index

2001: A Space Odyssey, 330 275, 277, 307, 308; object-

A Distanced Land, 229 centered, 288; physiological,
Abstract Expressionism, 280 294; postmodern, 313; pre-
accommodation, 123, 124 ference, 294; psychological,
acculturalization, 282 291; response, 301; scope of,
act of knowing, 202 273; theory, 267; traditional,
action, 164 268, 273-275, 277, 304-306,
active learner, 107, 108 308, 313; value, 6, 9, 16,
activity, 162 17,51,68, 98, 227, 237,
Adams, Ansel, 227, 228, 276 268, 275, 278, 281, 289,
Adams, Robert, 228 294, 297-302, 304-307, 334,
Adorno, Theodor, 34, 35, 38, 340, 344
283, 285, 296-298, 308 African art, 121
advertizing, 48, 213, 283 African tribal masks, 319
aesthetic, 3, 54, 267, 268, 270, agency, 13, 111, 164, 171, 174,
271, 272, 276, 277, 286, 191; theory of, 172
298, 308; behaior, 293; agents, 174
bourgeois, 296, 300; critical, Alberti, Leone Battista, 74
267, 269, 273, 275, 284, alienation, 40, 47, 48
285, 289, 300, 304-308, allegoria, 156
310, 311, 314; defining, ambiguity, 23, 108, 114
272, 275,276; of difference, American schools, 85
339; discourse, 308; episte- American Way, 95
mology of, 275, 277; experi- American West, 227
ence, 268, 273-275, 278, An Old Man and His Grandson,
279, 281, 282, 287, 288, 226
290, 292, 294, 305-307, anagogia, 156
311, 313, 334, 344; history analogy, 194
of, 278; knowledge, 269; analytic induction, 252
machine, 330; mainstream, anthropology, 257
270, 301; modernist, 274, anthroposemiotics, 200, 212
358 Index

apparatus, 9 186; instrumental utility of,

Apple, Michael, 38 78; laws of 98; meaning in,
Apples, 276 214; Modernism in, 329,
applicability, 254, 255 334; nature of, 270, 276;
Applied Statistics and Research object, 72; objectification of,
Methods course, 182 102; as ornamental, 85; pop-
arbitrariness, 212 ular, 283, 284, 299; post-
Arch of Constantine, 51, 52, 76 modern, 326, 338-340, 342;
archi-ecriture, 220 power of, 278; production,
architectonic: model, 150, 152, 318, 322; projects, 323;
153; psychology, 147 Renaissance, 78; Roman,
architecture, postmodern, 340, 52; as spectacle, 282; stu-
341 dent, 287; teachers, 38; as
archive, 59,301,317,318 text, 287, 303, 306, 311;
argument, 210, 211 value in, 214; work of, 279
Aristotle, 68, 70, 71, 149, 150, art criticism, 9, 313; critical, 312
151, 198, 199, 243, 278 art education, 7, 8, 51, 55, 90,
Arnauld, 202 98, 110, 152, 267, 288,
Arnheim, Rudolf, 38, 137-139, 294, 302, 335; access to, 10;
234 establishment, 66; German
art, 6, 38, 50, 51, 54, 57, 69, system, 80, 82; histories of,
76, 96, 100, 108, 140, 148, 65; instrumental, 79, 95;
184, 186, 206, 214, 233, medieval, 73; Modernist,
260, 267, 273, 276, 277, 331, 335; philosophy of, 3,
280-282, 289, 290, 295, 4; positivism in, 99; sys-
297, 299, 300, 305, 322, tem, 300; traditional, 28,
325, 334, 340; architectonic, 55, 186, 190, 274, 289,
148; bourgeois, 284, 297; 303, 308; working class, 84
child, 103; commodification art worlds, 8, 16, 55, 56, 60, 61,
of, 72 282, 283, 298; as 88, 125, 184, 233, 236,
critical praxis, 269; as dan- 264, 268-270, 274, 297,
gerous knowledge, 335; 298, 301, 305, 308, 311,
defining, 273, 275, 276, 325; students', 12, 54, 58,
280, 285, 319; high, 284, 79, 101, 125, 238, 297;
288, 296, 298, 299, 325; colonization of student, 63,
educators, 103; Gothic, 225; 187, 268, 286, 308, 318
Greek, 71; high, 55, 60, 75; art-as-commodity, 31
history instruction, 121; art-as-praxis, 28, 65, 67, 112,
industry, 274; instruction, 113, 187, 267, 274, 278,
67, 84, 86, 88, 103, 139, 286, 296, 298,310,314
Index 359

art-as-product, 186 Bell, Clive, 272

art-craft dichotomy, 81, 83, 87, Bellini, Giovanni, 226, 227
89 Benjamin, Walter, 34, 281-283,
art-power relationship, 89 296, 298
artist, 74, 276, 278; postmodern, Berger, Arthur Asa, 45, 192, 193
325, 338; Renaissance, 75, Berkeley, George, 205, 206
78, 81; Romantic, 87, 88 Berlyne, Daniel E., 153, 272,
ARTS PROPEL, 315, 319-324 291, 293
assessment, 320, 321 Beuys, Joseph, 344
assimilation, 123, 124 Bible, 15, 17
astronomy, 15 Biklen, S. K., 239-241, 259
atypicality, 252 binary opposition, 21, 217, 218,
Augustine, 200, 201 221, 222, 224-226, 228,
Austin, John Langshaw, 166 230-232, 236, 271
author, 207, 216, 218 Binet, Alfred, 26, 141
Ayer, A. J., 243, 329 Black Quadrilateral, 341
Boas, Frans, 257
Bacon, Francis, 203 Bogdan, R. C , 239-241, 259
Bailey, Henry Turner, 94 Bohm, David, 134
Barkan, Manuel, 315 Bolin, P., 93, 94
Baroque, 327 books, 72
Barrett, Terry, 313, 318 Bosanquet, Bernard, 278
Barthes, Roland, 156, 207, 234 Boston Museum of Fine Arts, 99
base-superstructure relationship, bourgeoisie, 46; society, 48;
43, 45 values, 47, 49
basic level primacy, 118 Bowles, S., 40, 41, 96
basic-level category structures, brain, 171
117 Brentano, 177
Baudelaire, Charles, 299 Bressler, C. E., 222
Bauhaus, 330 British House of Commons, 79
Baumgarten, Alexander, 278 British Parliament, 82
beauty, 227, 232, 270, 279, 301- British Royal Academy of Art,
305, 313 79, 83
Beethoven, Ludwig Van, 144 Britzman, Deborah, 10
behavioral psychology, 171 Bruner, Jerome, 20, 25, 126,
behaviorism, 20, 105, 145, 146, 138, 147, 154, 156, 157,
171, 206, 207, 272, 293, 158, 159
330, 331 Bull's Head, 57, 280
belief, 5, 7 Butcher, S. H., 71
360 Index

camera, 228 coercion, 260

Campbell, 182 cognition, 128
canon, 59 cognitive: categorization theory,
capitalism, 31, 32, 44, 95; cor- 116, 118, 122; change, 123;
porate, 340; crisis of, 33 colonization, 119; develop-
capitalist system, 231 ment theory, 135; interests,
Caracci brothers, 75 36, 37; processes, 124
Carnap, Rudolf, 243, 329 cognitive psychology, 106-110,
Cary, Richard, 294 120, 123, 146; critical, 127
case study, 252 Colapietro, 216
Cassirer, Ernst, 206 Cold War, 16, 39, 43; school
category, 116, 117 curricula, 133
catharsis, 70 Cole, Henry, 84
Catholic Church, 17, 76 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 325
causality, 174 colonization process, 269
causation, 174 colonized mind, 122
cause, 163 color, 99, 100
caves of Lascaux and Altamira, Colosseum, 51
155, 334 commodification, 285, 300; pro-
censorship, 68, 77 cess, 296
Cezanne, 276, 330 commodity, 232; fetishism, 48
character, 158-160 communication, 36, 113, 114,
chiaroscuro, 17, 100 162, 173, 195, 216, 230,
Child Study Movement, 102 247, 260; animal, 200
Chomsky, Noam, 114 communism, 30, 42, 44
Christ, 226 Compte, Auguste, 18, 243
Christianity, 71 computer, 182, 183
cinema, 283 concept, 24; formation, 124;
circular reasoning, 253 formation model, 112; organ-
Clark, Gilbert, 316, 319 ization, 115
class, 10, 45, 67, 285; British conception, 113
working, 12; conflict, 32; concepts, 112, 116, 206, 271
elite, 47, 67, 68; identity, conformity, 60
47; structures, 40, 72, 207 connectedness, 306, 313, 326
class difference, 81, 87; institu- Connery, Sean, 208
tionalized, 89 connotation, 193, 203
classroom, 11 consciousness, 177, 178; class,
Cockrell, Charles, 79, 80 33; critical, 11,21,22, 63,
codes, 191, 192, 195, 207, 236; 124, 185, 279, 289, 308,
artist's, 193 310; false, 7
Index 361

Constantine, 51-53 336, 337; foundations of,

construct, 24, 25 256; goal, 274; qualitative
constructivism, 123, 124 methodologies in, 259;
consumer, 232; culture, 47 strategies, 308, 309
consumerism, 44, 45, 80, 283 critical theory, 3, 8-11, 13-15,
context, 196, 247, 277 17, 22, 23, 27, 31, 34, 39,
contextualization, 136 43, 51, 63, 74, 89, 120,
contrapposto, 52 123, 148, 149, 160, 207,
control, 98 224, 261, 306
convention, 212 Crucifixion: The Last Judgment,
Cook, Edward, 97 225
Copernicus, 243 Crystal Palace Exposition, 84
Corinthian, 328 cubism, 121
crafts, 81 Culler, 135
creativity, 89 cultural: capital, 130, 131;
Crimea, 344 imperialism, 49
crisis, 269 culture, 30, 161,213, 282, 285;
critical: accomodation, 124, 125; administered, 286; bourgy,
action, 308; action research, 283, 295, 299; consumer,
261; applied research, 261; 295, 296; dominant, 59;
constructivism, 115, 122; high, 59, 274, 295, 297;
inquiry, 24; learner, 124; industry, 286, 300; mass,
pedagogy, 8, 11, 12,21, 286, 296; material, 295; pop-
116, 122, 124, 175, 306; ular, 286, 287, 299; produc-
praxis, 229, 272; questions, tion of, 283; workplace, 41
308, 310, 312; theory, 317 curriculum, 8, 16, 35, 83, 85,
critical art pedagogy, 13, 20, 21, 102, 197,316, 326; art, 61;
28, 33, 34, 38, 43, 54, 58, hidden, 41; marginalization
60, 61, 69, 103, 105, 106, of art in, 65
108, 115, 118, 120, 124,
125, 139, 140, 145, 146, Dada Movement, 58
150, 160, 172, 174, 178, Danto, Arthur, 56
181, 184-188, 191, 196, data, 249, 329; analysis, 183,
207, 211, 214, 215, 220, 247; analysis procedures,
225, 228, 229, 233, 235- 251; collection techniques,
238, 261, 267-270, 273, 25; hard, 241; soft, 241
277, 279, 281, 286, 287, David, 280
288, 295-298, 300, 302-304, Day, Michael, 66, 103, 316, 319
306, 308, 310, 312, 313, The Declaration of Independence,
318, 322, 324, 325, 326, 165
362 Index

decoding, 192 Doric, 328

deconstruction, 21, 22-24, 27, Dow, Arthur Wesley, 98, 99,
135, 181, 195,214-225, 100, 101, 289
227-230, 232-234, 236-238, Doyle, Conan, 342
261,271,286, 342; hierar- drama, 69
chies in, 220 drawing instruction, 94
Deeley, John, 199, 213 dress codes, 42
deep structure, 114 Duchamp, Marcel, 58
Delaroche, Paul, 298 Duncan, Carol, 10
The Delivery of the Keys, 226 Durer, Albrecht, 73
DeMan, Paul, 342 Dyce, William, 82, 83
democracy, 95 d'Ailly, Petrus, 201, 202
denotation, 193, 203
dependability, 254, 255, 258 Eco, Umberto, 208, 209, 234
Derrida, Jacques, 21, 135, 195, economic: exploitation, 234; in-
215,218-223,230, 234, strumentalism, 84, 85, 91,
261, 342 96, 97, 102, 103
Derrida Queries DeMan, 341 education, 3, 50, 172, 178; as a
Descartes, Rene, 150, 243, 331 dialogue, 188; history of,
design: education, 83; theory, 213
99-102 Educational Testing Service, 320
deskilled production, 83, 89 Efland, A., 67, 78
determinism, 245 Egyptian, 81; artists, 82
Dewey, John, 21, 39, 60, 100, Einstein, Albert, 144
148, 279, 287, 312, 322 Eisner, Elliot, 8, 66
diachronic analysis, 194, 195 elitism, 285
dicent, 210, 211 emancipation, 9, 29, 188, 308
Dickie, George, 56, 57 emotions, 176
differance, 221, 222, 224 Empire State Building, 165
digital manipulation, 235, 236 empirical observation, 9
Discipline-Based Art Education empiricism, 204
(DBAE), 152, 271,277, empowerment, 9
315-319, 321 Empson, William, 23
discourse, 105, 172, 174, 194; of England, 79, 96, 97
dispair, 11 English manufacturers, 79
discursive: causality, 173; psy- Enlightenment, 85
chology, 146, 147, 164-169, entertainment, 283
171-178 entity, 202
divine right, 77 environment, 231, 232
domain project, 321 Epicureans, 199, 200
Index 363

episteme, 219 Franklin, Benjamin, 66, 85-87

equestrian statues, 16 freedom, 8, 88, 171, 175,310;
Equivalents, 229 artistic, 89
ethics, 148 Freire, Paulo, 38
ethnocentrism, 41 French Academy of Art, 76, 77,
ethnography, 258 78
Ewart, William, 79, 80 French monarchs, 76
experience, 204, 287; human, Freud, Sigmund, 35, 144, 327
209; lived, 238, 246, 302, Freudian psychoanalytic theory,
310; peak, 305 327
experiments, 255 frieze, 53
experts, 15, 275, 310 Fromm, Erich, 34
explicate order, 134 functional fixedness, 111
expression, modes of, 206 fuzzy sets, 116
expressiveness, 290
Gablik, Suzi, 11, 343
fabula, 156 Gaitskell, C , 103
false dichotomy, 271 Galen, 200
family resemblance category, Galileo, 15, 243
116, 276, 277 Gandhi, 144
Fechner, Gustav, 291, 292, 293 Gardner, Alexander, 227
feminism, 185, 318 Gardner, Howard, 20, 140-145,
feminist epistemology, 129 315, 320, 321, 333
Fenollosa, Edward, 99 Gardner, R. W., 99
fetish, 32 gender, 14, 67, 89, 130
Ficino, 73 general interests, 37
fidelity, 251 generalizability, 245, 249, 252
field notes, 251 Gergen, Kenneth, 328, 330
figures, 159 gestalt psychology, 137, 177
formal operations, 129 Ghent Altar piece, 226
formalism, naive, 56, 97, 102, Ghirlandaio, Domenico, 226
185, 186, 288, 289, 302, Gillet, G., 165, 168, 170, 171,
303 175, 178
Foster, Stephen, 284 Gintis, 40, 41, 96
Foucalt, Michel, 338 Giroux, Henry, 11, 34, 38, 63,
Fowle, William Bentley, 91 185
France, 79 God, 15, 200
Frankfurt School, 29, 30, 31, 34, Goetz, J. P., 239, 256-258
35, 42, 44, 281, 283-286, Golden Section formula, 292
295-300 Goldsworthy, Andy, 344
364 Index

Gombrich, E. H., 76 hegemony, 28, 49, 63, 70, 76,

Goodman, Nelson, 139, 140, 90, 212, 260
277, 320 Heidegger, Martin, 215
The Gospel Book of Charle- hierarchy, 4, 39, 233; culture as,
magne, 72 55 intellectual, 6; of power,
The Gospel Book of Otto III, 12 218, 314; social, 16; socio-
government, 30 economic, 26; of value, 218,
Graham, Martha, 144 296
grammar, 114, 202 Heisenberg, Werner, 332, 333
Gramsci, Antonio, 49 Held, David, 31,34, 300
grand narrative, 339 hermeneutics of suspicion, 106
Greene, Maxine, 38 Heron, 247
Greer, Dwaine, 316, 319 Hine, Lewis, 257
grounded theory, 247 Hobbes, Thomas, 204
group: consciousness, 281, Hollywood, 343
identity, 282, 283 Horkheimer, Max, 34, 285, 295,
Grunberg, Carl, 30, 31, 34 296, 298, 300
Guba, E., 19, 20, 239, 243, 245, Howard, George S., 160, 161
246, 248, 251,254, 255 Hughes, Everett, 3, 258
Guernica, 280 human condition, 9, 31, 259
guild system, 73, 74 humanism, 73
Guthrie, Woody, 283 hunters, 155
Gwerb Institut, 80 Husserl, Edmund, 215, 242, 268
hypothesis testing, 112, 113,
Habermas, Jurgen, 13, 35, 36, 183
37, 38, 148
Hadrian, 52 icon, 162, 189, 210; natural, 202
Hall, G. Stanley, 102 iconic, 289
Hardiman, George, 294 iconography, 108, 313
Hardouin-Mansart, Jules, 76 ideas, 201, 204
Harré, R., 165, 168, 170, 171, identity, 35, 162
175, 178 ideology, 7, 15, 24, 49, 50
Harris, William Torrey, 97 images, 190
Hatch, J. A., 239 immigrants, 90
Hague, The, 78 implicate order, 134, 135
healing, 344 In Advance of the Broken Arm,
Heaven, 226 58
hedonism, 302 incubation, 110
Hegel, Friedrich, 28, 29 indeterminacy principle, 167
Index 365

index, 162, 189, 210 judgment, 306; reality, 151, 152;

individual, 160, 176, 196 value, 151, 152
individuality, 175 justice, 8; social, 9
industrial drawing instruction,
89, 90, 91, 92 Kabakov, Ilya, 341
Industrial Revolution, 78, 83, Kant, Immanuel, 29, 150
87, 256 Kellner, Douglas, 30
industrialization, 88 Kennedy, John, 290, 291
information, 107; processing Kepler, Johannes, 243
model, 107 Kermode, Frank, 156
injustice, 61 Kincheloe, Joe, 14, 18, 19, 34,
inquiry audit, 255 38, 122-130, 132-134, 186,
installations, 341 187, 261, 262, 264
instance, 162 Klett, Mark, 233
institutional theory, 56, 58 knowledge, 4, 7, 8, 10, 13, 19,
instrumentalism, 59, 61; critical, 22, 24, 28, 29, 36, 64, 72,
70; economic, 64, 71; 105, 131-134 149, 152, 181,
origins of economic, 68 183, 196-198, 201, 204,
integration, 268 222, 223, 233, 237, 241,
intelligence, 129, 130, 141, 142, 256, 261, 277, 281, 282,
268, 271; multiple, 20 329, 337-339; aesthetic,
intentionality, 177 310; constructed, 127, 160;
interpellation, 48, 49 dangerous, 34, 184, 185,
interpretant, 209, 210, 211 188, 215, 233, 239, 261,
interpretation, 105 265, 268, 310; emancipa-
interpreter, 223 tory, 36; feminist, 14; forms
Ionic, 77, 328 of, 37, 150, 185; historically
IQ test, 20, 25, 26, 141; cultural conditioned, 15; levels of,
bias in, 27 205; nature of, 238, 242;
Iser, Wolfgang, 154, 156 official, 89, 182; positivist,
istoria, 74, 75 264; producers of, 187; pro-
duction, 132; production pro-
Jackson, William Henry, 227 cesses, 151; tacit, 248; as
Jacob, E., 240 text, 127; traditional sys-
Jacobson, L., 45, 46 tems of, 218; verbal, 234
Jakobson, Roman, 156, 195, 209 Kramer, Hilton, 325
Janson, H. W., 52, 339 Kristeva, Julia, 207
jargon, 6, 247 Kruger, Barbara, 342
jobs, 94 Kubrick, Stanley, 330
journalism, 256 Kuhn, Thomas, 326, 327, 332
366 Index

Lakoff, George, 116, 117, 194 literacy, 72; politics of, 213
Lambert, Johann, 205, 206 literary criticism, 216
Lancelot, 202 literature, 192, 327
landscape 225-228, 232; as a literia, 156
text, 229; photography, 225, local narratives, 106
227-229 Locke, John, 204, 206
Langer, Suzanne K., 206, 276, Locke, 107
290, 291, 311 logic, 9, 116
language, 36, 113, 114, 115, Logical Positivism, 329
118, 161, 163, 164, 169, logistics, 251
197, 202, 204, 206, 212, logocentric assumption, 234
213, 223; oral, 113, 220; as logocentrism, 219, 234
sign system, 224; written, Lopez, Barry, 230, 232
220 Lyotard, Jean-Francois, 106, 325
Le Corbusier, 330
Leacock, 259 machine, 330, 331
learner, 146 macro-aesthetics, 295-297
lebensweldt, 268 Malevich, Kasimir, 341
LeBrun, Charles, 76, 77 Malinowski, Bronislaw, 258
LeCompte, M , 239, 256-258 Man Ray, 235
legitimation crisis, 33 Man Who Flew into Space from
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 203 his Apartment, 341
leisure, 71 Manet, 330
lekton, 199, 200 manifest destiny, 227
Leonardo, 73, 75 Mann, Horace, 90
Leondar, B., 140 mannerism, 75
LePlay, Fredrick, 257 manuscript, 72; illumination, 71
LeVau, Louis, 76 Mao, 42
liberation, 8, 35, 260, 269 Marcus Aurelius, 52
Lickert scales, 293 Marcuse, Herbert, 295, 296, 298
life world, 29, 264, 268, 269, marginalization, 12, 40
297, 305; colonization of, Marin, 170
308 Marx, 7, 29, 35, 38, 42
life stories, 161 Marxism, 30, 31-34, 36, 40, 42,
Lincoln, Y., 19, 20, 239, 243, 43, 46, 49, 50, 285, 318
246, 248, 251, 254, 255, masculine epistemology, 130
line, 99, 101 mass: culture, 44; market, 80;
linear: causality, 245; media, 30, 48, 50, 213
perspective, 17 Massachusetts Drawing Act of
linguistics, 211 1870, 91-95
Index 367

Massachusetts Bay Company, 85 276, 318, 325, 328-332,

masses, 283 334, 336, 339; concept of
Master of Flemalle, 57 art, 335; subverting, 333
Mayhew, Henry, 257 Modist School, 202
McCarthy, Cameron, 38 monasteries, 73
McCarthy, Thomas, 38 monks, 71
McLaren, Peter, 10, 12, 13, 38, Moonrise Over Hernandez, New
41, 185, 261, 262 Mexico, 276
McLuhan, Marshall, 49 moral instrumentalism, 96, 97,
meaning, 108, 115, 120, 136, 103
161, 168, 172, 173, 178, moralia, 156
193, 196, 197, 199, 201, morphemes, 114
211, 215, 216, 222, 241, Morris, Charles, 206
246, 248, 303, 304, 313; of Mozart, 144
art object, 237; constructed, multi-site study, 252
219; as product of discourse, Multiple Intelligences theory,
170; realm of, 163, 164 139, 140, 143-144, 320, 333
mechanical reproduction, 282, music, folk, 284; popular, 283
286 myths, 11, 229
media, 37
Medici family, 73, 74 Name of the Rose, 208
medieval era, 201 narrative, 154, 158, 160, 161
member check, 254 narrative psychology, 146, 147,
memory, 35, 107, 113, 204; dan- 153, 154, 156, 159, 160,
gerous, 34, 63, 67, 103 162, 163, 164
mental set, 111 NASA, 341
The Merode Altarpiece, 57, 107- Nason, S., 45
108 National Art Education Associa-
meta-epistemology, 133 tion (NAEA), 262, 263,
meta-narrative, 105 264, 317
metaphor, 57, 193, 194 National Gallery of Art, 80
metaphysics, 18, 329 National Geographic, 9
metonymy, 194 National Defense Education Act
Meyer, Pedro, 235 of 1958 (NDEA), 39, 40
Michelangelo, 55, 73, 75, 280 nationalism, 31, 80
military-industrial complex, 39 natural symptoms, 201
Millet, Jean Francois, 99 nature, 96, 226, 227, 230, 344;
mimesis, 234, 235, 302 commodified, 231; human,
mirror of nature, 109 328
Modernism, 32, 60, 127, 134, neo-Marxism, 42-45, 50, 207
368 Index

neo-positivism, 18 cultural, 327, 328, 337;

Neoclassicism, 327, 333 shifts, 333
New World, 85 Park, Robert, 258
Newman, Barnett, 3, 276 part, 163
Newton, 243 patronage system, 68, 74, 77
nexus, 174 Patton, M . Q., 249
Nicholas of Lyra, 156 Pearson-Product Moment
Nicole, 202 correlation, 255
Normal School of Design, 82, 83 Peel, Robert, 80
normative accountability, 166, peer debriefing, 254
169 peer influence, 42
norms, 172 perception, 113, 137, 138, 177;
Norris, 216 competency, 320; veil of,
notan, 99 168
Noth, W., 199, 200, 211 Perkins, David, 140, 320, 328
personality, 171, 175, 271, 272
object, 203, 209; knowledge of, perspective, 240 332; laws of,
242 290; multiple, 241
objectivity, 15, 16, 122, 123, Perugino, Pietro, 226
149, 182, 243, 244, 262, petite bourgeoisie, 46, 47
275, 303, 332, 337; myth Pfahl, John, 229, 233
of, 19, 148, 185 264 phenomenological inquiry, 242
observation, 253 phenomenology, 241, 242, 243
Ockham, William, 201, 202 philosophers, 5
onomata, 201 philosophy, 6, 7
ontology, 165; discursive, 166 phoneme, 113
operational definition, 24, 25 photography, 227, 228, 234,
operationalism, 20, 127, 244 235; ambiguity of, 229;
oppression, 9, 16, 23, 61, 196, digital, 236
207, 260, 271; hidden, 10, phusike, 204
14; sources of, 211 Piaget, Jean, 122-130, 135, 137,
optical realism, 17 138
O'Sullivan, Timothy, 227 Picasso, Pablo, 57, 121, 144,
280
painting, 341 pictorial perception, 290, 291
Palace of Versailles, 76, 77 Picture Study Movement, 98
Palette of King Narmer, 82 Pierce, Charles Sanders, 189,
pansemiotics, 206 190, 208-213, 215
paradigms, 56, 326, 327; Pittsburgh Public Schools, 320
Index 369

Plato, 23, 68, 69, 74, 198, 201, interests, 279; King's, 76;
215,278,283,302; Republic relations, 196, 212, 224;
of, 70 structures, 7
pleasure, 302, 303, 307 pragmatics, 207
plot, 157, 158 praktike, 204
poetry, 327 praxis, 3, 28, 33, 37, 38, 61,
poiesis, 149, 150, 151 103, 122, 149-151, 197,
Poinsot, John, 203 300, 310; critical, 63, 64,
Polanyi, Michael, 14, 185 301, 302, 311
Polkinghorne, Donald, 154, 161- pre-positivism, 243
164 President of Space, 341
polysemy, 108, 156, 228 presupposition, 157
Popes, 76 primacy, 118
Porter, Eliot, 228 primary apparition, 290, 311
position, 167 printing press, 72
positionings, 174 probabilistic, 116
positivism, 10, 18, 20, 31, 99, problem solving, 109-112
122, 105, 142, 146, 148, processfolio, 321
149, 171, 181, 243-245, processing, 107
271, 275, 276, 290, 291; production competency, 320
critique of, 19, 243; cult of, profit, 31
182; culture of, 127, 332 Project Zero, 139, 140, 320, 321
positivist: inquiry, 242; research proletariat, 46
methodologies, 181 propaganda, 78
post-formal: operations, 122; Protestantism, 97
thinking, 126, 130, 132, prototype primacy, 118
134, 135; theory, 131 prototypes, 117
post-positivist era, 246 The Psalter of King Louis IXJ2
postmodern: era, 38, 63; psychological epistemology,
paradigm, 106; 145, 146
pyschologies, 130 psychology, 20, 105
postmodernism, 7, 32, 52, 61, public relations, 213
122, 262, 277, 318, 325,
337-344; critical, 262 qualitative: data, 17, 20;
Poussin, Nicolas, 16, 77 methodology, 13, 181;
power, 5, 8, 14, 16, 51, 53, 54, paradigm, 187
72, 130, 207, 261, 338, qualitative research, 147, 239-
339; art as instrument of, 85, 241, 245, 247, 248, 255,
108; elite, 40, 74, 75, 76, 256, 258, 260;
313; of empathy, 134; characteristics, 247, 264;
370 Index

critical, 259, 261, 262, 265; referent, 189

data, 241, 248; definitions reflection competency, 320
of, 240, 240; designs, 247; reification, 32
in education, 259; evalua- relationships, 217, 265; causal,
tion, 253; instrument of, 248; power-belief-truth, 5-7;
250; inquiry, 254, 256; reliability, 253
methods, 240; methodolo- Renaissance, 17, 73-75, 226,
gies, 238, 243, 244, 248, 290, 327
256, 258, 259; paradigm, representamen, 209, 210; legi-
246, 249, 277; research sub- signs, 210; qualsigns, 210;
ject, 238, 247; study, 249, sinsigns, 210
250, 252; trustworthiness of, representation, modes of, 206
251, 253, 254, 258 reproduction theory, 90, 95
quantitative: data, 17, 20, 21, research, 185; questions, 247;
182; methods, 146, 183; styles, 183, 184, 263; team,
paradigm, 18, 183; re- 251; uncritical, 264
searchers, 25 resistance, 12, 175, 188, 318
quantitative research, 182, 239, Revolutionary War, 96
249, 251, 254, 255; data, rheme, 210, 211
241; experimentation, 248; Ricoeur, Paul, 106, 154
inquiry, 246; methods, 240, rigor, 248, 256
259; paradigm, 253, 333; Riis, Jacob, 257
studies, 241, 255 ritual, 11, 155, 281
Rockefeller Foundation, 320
race, 67, 89 Roman Empire, 53
racial prejudice, 192 Roman Senate, 52
Raphael, 73, 75 Romantic: art, 328; poetry, 327
Rauschenburg, 299 Romanticism, 87, 327, 328, 333
reader, 207,216 Rome, 51
realism, naive, 19, 245, 314, Rorty, Amelee, 159, 160
329, 331 Rorty, Richard, 109
realities, constructed, 254 Rosch, Eleanor, 116-122
reality, 3, 123, 206, 310, 337; Rosenthall, R., 45, 46
critical conciousness of, 311; Rousseau, 60
objective, 203; realms of, Royal Gallery in Berlin, 80
161 rules, 172, 173, 174
reason, 29, 36, 328 Ruskin, John, 96, 97
Redgrave, Richard, 88
reductionism, 20, 136, 127, 245, St. Francis in Ecstacy, 226
294 St. Peter, 226
Index 371

St. Peter's Basilica, 226 sign systems, 196, 197

Saffian, 170 signa instrumentalia, 201
salience, 151 signa formalia, 201
sampling, 249; purposive, 249 signification, 162, 174, 175
Saussure, Ferdinand de, 189, significations, 191; proper, 203;
190, 192, 205, 208, 211- accessory, 203
213, 215 signified, 191, 213, 224; transcen-
Schacter, Stanley, 25 dental, 219, 224, 225, 227,
schemata, 123 235, 261
Schlick, Moritz, 243, 329 signifier, 199,211,213,224
School of Port Royal, 202, 203 signs, 172-174, 188-192, 197,
schooling, 51 199-209, 211, 220, 224;
Schutz, Alfred, 242 indexical natural, 202; arbi-
science, 148, 243, 332 trary conventional, 202, 203;
scientific: approach, 128; mimetic, 203; systems, 206
method, 13, 14, 18, 31, similarity, 162
150, 181, 328 simile, 193
scientism, 18 Sistine Chapel, 226
Sebeok, Thomas, 198, 200 sjuzet, 156
Select Committee, 79, 83 skilled labor, 94
selection, 248 skills, 78, 150; mechanical
self, 159, 171, 174 drawing, 86
semantics, 207 slaves, 284
semeia, 201 The Slaves, 280
semeion, 188 slogans, 186
semeiotike, 204 Smith, Walter, 92, 96
semiology, 212, 213 Snow, C. P., 239
semiotics, 181, 188-191, 193, social: change, 31; class, 26;
194, 196-198, 201, 202, class markers, 41; context,
204-208, 211, 212, 214, 106; control, 29; criticism,
215, 221, 223, 229, 236, 9; Darwinism, 26, 31, 45;
238, 307; modern, 208 inequalities, 279; injustice,
sensory cognition, 278 224; order, 278; reconstruc-
setting, natural, 247, 248, 250 tion, 40; survey, 257
Sextus Empiricus, 200 sociology, 257
sfumato, 225 Socrates, 68, 69, 198
Shaffer, Fern, 343, 344 Sontag, Susan, 234
shamans, 155 Soto, Dominicus, 203
Sherlock Holmes, 342 South Kensington School of
Sherman, Cindy, 343 Design, 84
372 Index

Soviet Union, 42 Romantic concept of, 89

speaker, 167 Tansey, Mark, 341
speech, 218 Tarbell, Ida, 257
speech-act, 166, 167 Tartars, 344
spoken word, 199 teachers, 4, 5, 188; art, 7; as re-
Spring, Joel, 16, 39, 40, 90, 96 searchers, 185, 186, 187
Sputnik, 39 teaching, 185
Stalin, 42 techne, 29, 38, 148
Stalinist era, 44 technology, 282, 298
standardization, 286 terminology, 5, 272
statistical analysis, 183 terribilita, 73, 78, 336
status quo, 11, 47, 301 texere, 216
Steffens, Lincoln, 256 text, 105, 106, 115, 116 135,
Steinberg, Shirley, 126-130, 195, 216-218, 221, 223,
132, 133, 134 225, 237, 282, 339, 341;
Stoics, 199, 200, 209; sign images as, 235; landscape
model, 199 as, 229; lisible, 207; mar-
storytelling, 154, 155, 157 gins of, 225; meaning of,
Stravinsky, Igor, 144 217; photograph as, 228;
Stroud, Walter, 147-153 scriptible, 207; virtual, 154,
structuralism, 195 160
student, 5, 40, 64, 94, 95, 188, textile industry, 91
232, 237, 318; art, 105, 179 textum, 216
subject, as object, 246; as theoria, 149, 150, 151
participant, 245, 247 theory-fact interdependence, 244
subjectification, 157 theory-practice dichotomy, 5,
subjectivity, 57, 159, 173, 242, 182
271 thick descriptions, 255
Suprematist Composition: White thinking, 113
on White, 341 thought, 168, 169, 206;
surface structure, 114 intentionality of, 167
symbol, 107, 108, 112, 161, Ti, 82
162, 189, 190, 191, 206, Tice, George, 233
210, 289; motivated, 202 tikkun, 10
synchronic analysis, 194, 195 time-on-task, 110
synecdoche, 194 tracking, 95
syntax, 169, 207 traditional epistemologies, 185
transferability, 255
tabula rasa, 107, 204 transformational grammar, 114
talent, 54, 55, 88, 290; Trobriand Islanders, 258
Index 373

trope, 193 Waagen, Gustave, 80, 82

truth, 5, 7, 14, 18, 65, 198, 161, Warhol, Andy, 299
168, 201, 219, 234, 241, wealth, 46
243, 254, 259, 310, 329, The Weavers, 284
339; as appropriateness, 169; Wedding Portrait, 190
myth of absolute, 224; uni- Weitz, Morris, 276
versal, 68; value, 254, 259 wilderness, 230, 231, 232
Turgenev, 30 Wilhelm, Georg, 29
typicality, 252 Willis, Paul, 12
Wirth, Luis, 258
U.S. Geological Survey, 208 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 23, 56,
Uelsmann, Jerry, 235 116, 170, 276, 277
Underground Railway, 284 Wolfe, Virginia, 144
universals, 201 women, 343
Urmson, J. O., 287, 288 women, 94, 102
words, 202, 204
validations, 174 Wordsworth, William, 327
validity, 245, 253, 258; external, work, 33, 36, 37, 38, 47
255; internal, 254; Work, Henry Clay, 284
value, 7, 313, 328 workers, 40, 47
value-free inquiry, 127 World War I, 26,31
valuing, 151 World War II, 29, 344
Van Eyck, Hubert, 225 worldmaking, 154
VanEyck, Jan, 190, 191,225 writing, 218
variable, 254
Vasari, Georgio, 75, 77 Yosemite, 227
verstehen, 242, 244 Young, Robert, 27, 28, 33, 38,
vertex, 220 39
Vickers, George, 150
Vienna Circle, 18, 243, 329 Zadeh, Lofti, 116
visual thinking, 137, 234 Zernich, Theodore, 294
vocational training, 67 zhdanovism, 44
voice, 202 zoosemiotics, 200
Von Schlegel, August, 327, 328 Zukier, Henri, 158
Von Schlegel, Friedrich, 327,
328
Vygotsky, 169
About the author:
Richard Cary serves as Professor and Chair of the
Department of Art at Mars Hill College near Asheville, North
Carolina. A n avid category transgressor, Cary is an artist and
generalist scholar-researcher who holds graduate degrees in
both Art and Educational Research Methodology. He authored
a chapter in Measured Lies: The Bell Curve Examined, named
in 1998 as Outstanding Human Rights Book of the Year by
the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights in
North America. Along with pursuing his research interests in
aesthetic experience and social critique, Cary is engaged in
creating photographic art at old-growth forest sites, a project
funded by the Appalachian College Association.